Winnemia Shower & Toilet Construction April 10-20 2023
Winnemia campgrounds is 149km East from Carnarvon and 36km west from Gascoyne junction, located right beside the Gascoyne River at the entry to the Kennedy Range National Park.
We arrive at Winnemia campgrounds in the afternoon on the 11th April which is part of the Jimba Jimba Pastoral lease and made camp for the remainder of our stay.
The main construction was for a shower and a dual disability toilet to be built, the concreate floor for these structures had been layer days earlier so all that had to be done is erect the buildings.
A group of people set about building the structures, while a couple built a table for the inside of the main building that had been restored 6 months earlier. Timber for the top of the table was sourced from second-hand that remained when the campgrounds was flooded in 2010.
300 metres south of the campsite was an old sharing shed that was destroyed, and a lot of bits of tin sheet and wooden beams were scattered all over the ground. A group of people went to clean up this area and collect the tin sheets and wooden beams.
Jimba Jimba station owner brought in a truck so that all the collected material could be taken away, it took about 2 days to remove it all.
Construction of Toilets & Shower
All this material was taken away to be reused by the Jimba Jimba station owner. This was a big exercise and took many days and volunteers to clean it up.
While all this was going on some people went out to collect old unused fence post around the station to be dug in around the buildings as a barrier. This was to be used as a vehicle exclusion area. There is no power at the site and the water for the shower and toilet is gravity fed from a tank 350m away.
All the work was completed by 18th April, the area was cleaned up and ready for visitors.
On the 19th April a few of us went on a sighting trip into the Kennedy Range National Park, we couldn’t get across the river at the camp grounds as the water level was too high, so we crossed it at Gascoyne Junction.
We visited Temple Gorge a 2km trek from the car park following a dry creek bed to a sandstone rock face that had a pool at the bottom
This pool was a welcome relief after a long walk and a place to rest before heading back to the car park, After that we visited Honeycomb Gorge this was a short easy walk of ½ km
The rock face formed by wind and water spray from a seasonal waterfall above the cliff-face.
The next day on 20th April was the day we have all be working towards as it was Solar eclipse day and we had may people arriving at the campsite to view it.
We had local government politicians, families with children, tourist and Track Care supporters.
This wasn’t a total eclipse but it still got dark, at our location the maximum obscurity of the sun was 91% at 2:55 pm, still spectacular.
An enjoyable time was had by all with the effort being rewarded by Track Care members having free access to the site in the future.