Trilby Station - 6 July 2014

We slept in this morning till 8 o'clock - unheard of normally for us.

We heard there was a big group coming in today. A father and son group of about 17. They are booked into the shearers quarters. We decided to do some washing and tried out the container and plunger we bought for this purpose. It worked pretty well.

The 3 families from Brisbane that were camped near us left this morning for White Cliffs. They are working their way home. I think the school holidays finish next weekend.

We had a look inside the new Shearing Shed near our campsite this morning. It is huge and has a raised timber floor. It looks like you could hold a dance inside and in fact, the Murray's daughter, Alex, had her 30th birthday inside late last year. It is certainly state of the art.

We headed into Louth for lunch at Shindy's Inn. Louth was established by Thomas Mathews and named after County Louth in Ireland where he came from. He left his wife of 6 years, Mary, in Ireland until he had established himself here, before bringing her out. She died when she was 42. He commissioned a granite monument to be built in Bendigo, by which time Thomas was married for the 3rd time. I wonder how his 3rd wife felt. The monument took nearly 3 years to come by paddle steamer as the Darling River was at an all time low at the time. The monument, a Celtic Cross, is 7 metres tall. Every year on the anniversary of Mary's death in August, the sun reflects from the Celtic Cross to the front door of the spot where their house once stood.

Louth has only the pub, Shindy's Inn. It is supposed to have a General Store but I think that has since closed, as we saw no sign of it. There is a small primary school, an oval (made of dirt and stones), a tennis club with a couple of courts and outside town there is a huge race track. They have a big race meet in August each year. In days gone by, the town had 3 hotels, a cordial factory, 3 bakeries, 2 butchers, a post office, 3 churches, a Chinese garden, a general store and a police station. It now has a population of 35.

It didn't warm up at all today. There was a cold wind blowing all day. There was the possibility of rain but the chances weren't high. I spoke to Di, a lady working on the property at the moment, who said that Liz usually lets you know if it is going to rain, to give people the opportunity of getting out. There only needs to be 5ml and you can't get out of the property. That's because of the red dust/dirt.

Also, when I was talking to Di, she said there is a group of 180 people coming in August/September. They have requested a dinner and a breakfast, which Liz does on request for anyone staying. The meal will be set up and served in the big shearing shed.