The Ghostly Stockyard of the Borradaile Plains

Introduction

I’m surprised sometimes by how far our searches take us back in time. This story is about a stockyard built about 175 years ago and is now little more than a ghost in the landscape.

Looked for the Mole Creek Track

For me, this story began more than 40 years ago whilst I was researching the Mole Creek Track. This track linked Liena to Rosebery via the elevated Pelion Plains (see our blogs about the Pelion Plains here and here).  Today, it forms some sections of the Arm River and Overland Tracks.¹

In 1897, the surveyor in charge of finding the best route for this track, E.G. Innes, reported that he had followed an old cattle-track south from Gads Hill near Liena (we wrote about Gads hill, here and here).²  It headed in the right direction but he did make small deviations to improve the line of his track.  He said that he left the old cattle-track completely at the Borradaile Plains where it turned towards to the Mersey and Arm River valleys and he continued over the high and exposed February Plains.³

 

In the late 1990s, I had the amazing luck of finding an accurate survey of the old cattle-track. It dated from 1877.⁴ The track would have been first formed in the 1850s when the Field family took over grazing land at Howells Plains, in the upper Mersey River valley.⁵ They drove cattle to the Howells Plains where they would graze freely. When grown the cattle, by then wild, would be driven to civilisation and slaughter.

When I laid the survey onto a modern map I found that some of the old cattle-track had been taken over by current roads and tracks. Some of it appeared not to have been disturbed by modern activity. One of these places was the Borradaile Plains. Could the old cattle-track lead me to the slightly later Mole Creek Track? There was only one thing to do, go there and look.

Just a post

It was great to go back to these wild and isolated plains. I looked along their eastern side where the old survey showed the cattle-track running.  In the search I found nothing of it. However, I noticed a lonely tall solid post on the supposed alignment of the cattle-track. It was battered, weather worn and rotting.   I left the plains wondering if this was a marker post for the Mole Creek Track or the even older cattle-track.

 

 

A closer look at the paper work

Back at home, I checked the old survey and there, just in the spot where I found the post, was a tiny illustration and note, ‘stockyard’.  I needed to know more so I contacted Simon Cubit.  He asked how tall was the post – well over 1 ½ metres. Ah, it needs to be that high if the stockyard was meant for wild cattle.  In our opinion, the post might have been remains of the stockyard on the 1877 survey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2000, another look

In 2000, I was back at the Borradaile Plains with Simon looking at the historic Borradaile Plains hut. We also had a closer look at the old post that I had found and searched its surrounds.

 

There was a lot of evidence that I hadn’t noticed before. Timbers lay in a row in a shallow depression in the ground. They formed a square –the footprint of the stockyard perhaps?.  There was a deeper depression near one corner that could been worn by cattle rushing in and out of a gateway for the stockyard.  Even the alignment and length of the ruts were consistent with the sketches in the survey.  All the evidence pointed to one conclusion, this was the remains of a stockyard built in the 1850s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2019, almost gone

Ian and I were in the area so we went to look at the stockyard site again.  By this time I knew that the Mole Creek Track had not followed the cattle-track down the eastern side of the Borradaile Plain. The two tracks had separated at their junction at the northern edge of the big Borradaile Plain. We walked in from the southern side of the Borradaile Plains, past furrows left after the ‘Peat Moss Affair’ ended sphagnum moss extraction in the 1980s.⁶

Luckily, we were older, wiser and more experienced in observing old artefacts in the bush. The old post had fallen and all the features were so much fainter. The perimeter depressions were vague and the timbers were mainly splinters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ghost fades

The timbers of the stockyard are condemned to disappear soon. The hooves of cattle, that still brought to these plains to continue in the old tradition of grazing in summer, have splintered and broken the timbers.  What remained is largely covered by grass and also rotting into the wet plain.

Even though the remains are almost gone, modern technology, in form of LIDAR, will reveal the ghostly shape of the stockyard. LIDAR, a laser technology projected from planes, can see through vegetation, and see changes in the surface of the ground.

In the end, it is the wild cattle which have left their enduring mark in the ground. When they were driven, unwilling, into the confines of the stockyards, they milled and pushed along the fences that held them captive and they wore the ground in the shape of the yards. Even though they were there so long ago their impression on the landscape will continue to haunt the plains.

 

 

 

Copyright Peter Brown 2025

1 Blogs; The Pelion Stockyards – Revisited, Huts on the Pelion Plains
2 Blogs; An Old Track on the February Plains, The Last of the Innes Track, The Mystery of the Missing Publican
3 E.G. Innes, “Report of Track from Mole Creek to Mount Black”, Votes and Proceedings of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Vol. 37, Paper 43, 3 August 1897.
4 Percy Sorell, “Map, Lincoln 11, parish of Liena, Arm Rivulet, various landholders, field book no.502”, Archives Tasmania, Item Number AF396/1/1428.
5 Simon Cubit, Mountain Stories Volume 1, 2016, forty degrees south, p39.
6 National Times, 30 November 1986, “Premier Gray bogged down in a ‘Peatgate’, “Tasmanian Premier Robin Gray is facing a crisis over his Government’s handling of the administration of the State’s potentially rich peat industry. Allegations of bribery, corruption and incompetence have been made by the media, businessmen and the State Opposition”; Duncan Kerr, address to the House of Representatives, Official Hansard, No. 166, 13 April 1989; Sunday Tasmania, 18 May 1986, “Moss millions down the drain”.