Captain Fawcett and Dwellingup #1
Trip leader: Ivan Cifuentes
Members: Ivan & Marie Murphy , Joe Metcalf, Chris Kerry, Kim Nguyen, Mark Buntine, Dave Moore, Paolo Solera, Rick Lazar
History of the track:
The Fawcett Track commemorates one of the districts early pioneers, Captain Theo Fawcett from Pinjarra. In spite of his holding of 10,000 acres at Pinjarra, and land being easily available, Captain Fawcett realised he and his family would require heavier land, so decided to look towards the other side of the Darling Range. It was here he decided to build his house on a selected piece of land. Captain Fawcett showed his bush craft skills by making his return journey directly through the bush to nearest civilisation. He blazed trees on his way to show his workman. That blazed track is almost exactly the route on which the present day road runs from Marradong to Dwellingup.
March 25th 2018, 9 vehicles set off at 10 am from the Dwellingup visitor Centre for the 20 min drive to the Captain Fawcett track. The weather was overcast with a few drizzles here and there but it wasn’t enough even to keep the dust down.
We aired down and started rolling. Many of the big ruts had been recently filled in but there were still plenty of opportunities for wheel flexing and tilting sideways.
Rick was quick to show us how the scary stuff is done….he scared us all that much that no one decided to follow in his wheel tracks.
New member Paulo, collected some rubbish along the track and used his handy wheel carrier bin to store and take it away. Very impressive to see new members show such initiative to help Keep Australia Beautiful.
After crossing Drier road we weren’t able to continue as a non-club vehicle had broken down on the track and there was no way around him. Lucky for us Chris came up with a great plan B and we set off for exploring and even got to experience a river crossing.
Chris was a little too excited to cross the river and his number plate came off. Paulo whipped out his ‘travel tool bag’ which looked more like a professional tradie toolkit and got that number plate back on.
The water wasn’t high …but still enough to have a play and good splash.
Overall we had a great day and look forward to visiting the area again soon…..maybe even when the track is a little wetter.
Trip Report: Marie Murphy