Sheep Station Creek

Sheep Station Creek is a 231 hectare environmental reserve about 6km south-west of Caboolture.

The dense eucalyptus forest is very popular with horse riders, but today I explored it on the MTB with a couple of friends.

With all the rain we’ve been experiencing, it’s very difficult to find off-road places that are rideable. The gravel trails here hold up well in the wet – but we still managed to get covered in mud.

Historically, Sheep Station Creek is important because it contains many scarred trees which may be of Aboriginal origin, and it contains the remnants of the original road between Brisbane and Gympie that Tom Petrie helped blaze in the mid 19th century.

Looking at the dense forest and muddy trails, I am stumped as to how anyone would have driven a horse and cart through there!

This is definitely a place I’d like to explore more in drier weather!

Many thanks to friends Tim and Michael for introducing me to this lovely place!

In her book “Tom Petrie’s Reminiscences of Early Queensland”, Constance Campbell Petrie says:

“When Davis (or ” Duramboi “) was asked to mark a road
to Gympie, he sought my father’s assistance for the first part
of the way, saying he would know where he was all right
when he got to the Glass House Mountains, as he had been
there before when living with the blacks. So Father took
him to the other side of Caboolture and put him and party
on his (” Tom ” Petrie’s) marked tree line to Petrie’s Creek,
on the Maroochy River. Then when the Kne to Gympie
was marked, he went with Cobb and Co. to help them pick
out stopping places for the changing of horses. . The road
was just frightful at that time ; we in these days could not
recognize it for the same.”

It’s pretty “frightful” today – but that’s the way we like it 🙂