Category: Aboriginal Australia

What an amazing ride!

I found this one by accident, after playing around with google maps for an hour or two. My aim was to find some quiet country roads, and see if I could add in a bit of dirt track, gravel roads, and some hill climbs. And I got it all.

Mosquito Creek Winery is hidden away in the back of Kurwongbah. The problem is that the creek bisects the road, so you can’t drive through it.

But with a bit of persistent rummaging around, I found a horse trail winding through the scrub, and was able to cross the creek and emerge triumphantly on the other side.

The other pleasant surprise is Browns Road. It’s a “phantom road” which appears on the map, but is not much more than a dirt track. I waded through some muddy grass at the end of McCormack Road, and eventually found a muddy washed out dirt track, with lots of ruts, bumps and puddles. It wound its way between several hidden away farms for a few kilometres before finally emerging at the end of a gravel road

And then a couple of kilometres later, the icing on the cake, a picturesque location with some fascinating history. Browns Creek:

In her book “Reminiscences of Early Queensland”, Constance Campbell Petrie recounted some fascinating history about Browns Creek. The incident probably occurred sometime in the 1840’s.

Another good corrobboree was based on an incident which happened when my father was a boy. This time it had reference to a young gin — Kulkarawa— who belonged to the Brisbane or Turrbal tribe. A prisoner, a coloured man (an Indian), Shake Brown by name, stole a boat, and making off down the bay, took with him this Kulkarawa, without her people’s immediate knowledge or consent. The boat was blown out to sea, and eventually the pair were washed ashore at Noosa Head—or as the blacks called it then, ” Wantima,” which meant ” rising up,” or ” climbing up.” They got ashore all right with just a few bruises, though the boat was broken to pieces. After rambling about for a couple of days, they came across a camp of blacks, and these latter took Kulkarawa from Shake Brown, saying that he must give her up, as she was a relative of theirs ; but he might stop with them and they would feed him. So he stayed with them a long time, and the bon-yi season coming round, he accompanied them to the Blackall Range, joining in the feast there.

Before the bon-yi gathering had broken up. Shake Brown, grown tired of living the life of the blacks, left them to make his way to Brisbane. He got on to the old Northern Road going to Durundur, and followed it towards Brisbane. Coming at length to a creek which runs into the North Pine River, there, at the crossing, were a number of Turrbal blacks, who, recognising him, knew that he was the man who had stolen Kulkarawa. They asked what he had done with her, and he replied that the tribe of blacks he had fallen in with had taken her from him, and that she was now at the bon-yi gathering with them. But this, of course, did not satisfy the feeling for revenge that Shake Brown had roused when he took off the young gin from her people, and they turned on him and killed him, throwing his body into the bed of the creek at the crossing. A day or two later, men with a bullock dray going up to Durundur with rations, passing that way, came across Brown’s body lying there, and they sent word to Brisbane, also christening the creek Brown’s Creek, by which name it is known to this day.

Kulkarawa, living with the Noosa blacks, fretted for her people, and she made a song which ran as follows : ” Oh, flour, where oh where are you now that I used to eat ? Oh, oh, take me back to my mother, there to be happy, and roam no more.” She evidently missed the flour which her own tribe got from the white people. The Noosa blacks made a dance to suit the song, and the corrobboree was considered a grand one.

The hill climbs were hard work (Total ascent about 600m), but the views were worth it!

I often look at Google Maps to find new places to ride. Some of the roads look fascinating going through some beautiful country. The problem is a lot of them don’t exist.

Mistake Road is a classic example. Driving along Dunlop Lane in Kurwongbah, if you read the Google Map, you’d expect a nice ride through to Shea Road. But the bitumen gives way to gravel, which gives way to dirt and mud, and in the end, all that is left is a horse trail.

And off that horse trail is Mistake Road.

So Steve and I bashed through some bush on the bikes, down Mistake Road. It went through a creek that was knee deep, so I cunningly took off my shoes and socks to keep them dry and waded through, holding up the bike.

The next creek, Steve said “Ride through it, it’s easy” so I did, stalled mid-way and soaked my lovely dry shoes.

At this point the track disappeared and we found ourselves in a paddock near a farm house.

“Woops, we’re accidentally trespassing” I thought. And just as we were about to get out onto the main road, we met up with the land owner driving her car out.

I had my spiel all worked out “I’m really sorry. We’re lost, can you tell us how to get out of here?”. But before I could, she congratulated us telling us that they’d only just prepared a new horse riding trail through their property, and we were the first people to come along it on our bikes.

Wendy was really friendly, and I was relieved that we hadn’t antagonized some old hermit of a farmer who was going to set (in my imagination) hungry dobermans onto us.

But the point is that there are hundreds of old roads that are on maps, that “aren’t really there”. But if you ride down them on a bike, just at the point where they “disappear” you can bash through the bush and find horse trails that are probably more than a century old.

I’ve got a hunch that the “Old North Road” from Brisbane to Durrundur came through here somewhere.

Constance Campbell Petrie writes about a Indian fellow by the name of Shake Brown who kidnapped an Aboriginal woman and sailed to what is now Noosa Heads. After he’d had enough of roughing it, he came down the Old North Road on his way back to Brisbane, where he was met by some Aboriginal relatives of the kidnapped woman who exacted revenge from Brown and killed him on the banks of what is now Browns Creek.

Browns Creek runs through this area, as you can see on the map, so it’s very likely we rode today near where Shake Brown was killed, which is also where the Archer Brothers would have ridden their horses in the 1840’s on the way to Durrundur Station near present day Woodford.

So next time you drive your car to the end of road that really ought to be there according to the map, remember that the road probably still is there – you just need a good horse (or a mountain bike) to go any further.