Camped in a Hut – Andamooka Station

I camped for one night in a small hut on Andamooka Station. Maybe it was the cook’s quarters, in days gone by. Here’s the story and photos:

Late afternoon at the hut I camped in, on Andamooka Station

Several of the arid region stations have been taken over by BHP Billiton, the big mining company that runs Olympic Dam Mine. The stations are run according to environmentally friendly, sustainable, parstoral practices. The stations are not financially very productive with these limitations but are readily available for minerals exploration and are kept in reasonably good pest free order as a good neighbour must.

However, Andamooka Station has recently been vacated and destocked. Exploration drilling is going on in various parts of the station. There was a small team of drillers staying at the homestead when I was there, traveling an hour and a half to their drilling site each day.

The open verandah where I slept. The breeze got up during the night and blew down into my sleeping bag.

I had my permission sorted from BHP, to be on the station, and the drillers didn’t mind what I did. So I found a small hut and moved in.

The main room, well, the only room, is about 12 feet square inside with solid stone walls about 400mm or 16 inches thick. Plastered on the outside with thrown cement mud and inside plastered smoothe and painted white.

In one corner is a small, corner open fireplace.

The floor is of slate laid straight on the ground, the biggest slabs approaching a metre square.

Often, in these abandoned huts, kangaroos or sheep have got in and the door shut. They can’t get out, and perrish in their prison cell. But the door was open and only what remained of a dead bird in the fireplace, and kangaroo poo in the doorway.

The hut must have been flooded to a shallow depth at some time. Curled up flakes of red silt covered the floor.

I opted to camp in the built in verandah, about two metres wide and the length of the hut, with an open doorway at each end to let the breeze flow through. A slate floor in the verandah also, plus a slate path leading to each of the verandah enterances.

Inside of the hut with character and romance.

The prevailing westerly wind had swept the verandah floor fairly clean.

Parking the bike at one enterance, I had plenty of light to set up my self inflating matress and sleeping bag.

The full moon had risen. Outside it was was brilliant and in the verandah it was quite light enough to see what I was doing. I like these moonlight nights spent in the outback.

During the night the breeze grew quite strong. The roof squeeked a bit and the wind blew down my sleeping bag. Another time I’ll sleep with my feet to windward.

The full Moon rising over the arid region at the Water Creek campsite of John McDouall Stuart.

Up, out of bed with the full moon still in the western sky and the slightest hint of a glow in the east. A drink of water and pack the cameras, satellite phone, water and food in the boxes on the racks of the bike and away, under headlights, on a trip that took most of the day and took me to Arcoona Homestead and back, which I gues would have been a total distance of 100km.

You may read of my photography trip, rediscovering the campsites of John McDouall Stuart, at my website that celebrates the great inland Australian explorer.

But I did make an extra, short trip while camped at Andamooka Station. Between setting up in the hut and dark I made a quick trip of about eight km to the site of John McDouall Stuart’s campsite. That’s where I saw the full Moon rise over the arid landscape.