Slate Gully

Slate Gully is a name that freely comes to mind as I venture down on foot, with my dog JOK, toward Devils Hole Creek. The name has a pleasant ring while being descriptive of the vision that will be discovered along the way.

To find this gully, the trek begins from a clearing that may inherit the name of “Huxley Hollow”, This clearing is situated below the hill where I live and it follows a depression between spurs on the Eastern side of the property. I continue my decent, cutting my way through the thick regrowth and follow the animal track that slowly transforms itself into an adventure through thick bush. The animal track leads me along a waterway that cuts deeper into the earth and exposes the underlying rock formation.  

On a previous adventure along here, with my son “Mun” and grandsons “Huxley and Xavier”, the boys uncovered a bottle that I reckon would date back to the 1950s. We aborted the adventure when the terrain became too steep and dangerous to be a simple bush walk with the kids. Turning back it was then that we explored Huxley Hollow, found Huxley’s animal cave and a site which I call “Huxley Crossing”. This is a flattened area where the site of the crossing will be evident as surface storm water would create water holes and submerge the surrounding area allowing a safe way across that particular valley.

However, further down, not far from where we turned back previously, the water flow merges with “Cascade Junction”. The sandy sediment and gravel there would prospectively harbour gold and other metals and minerals. From local folk stories, I believe that there would have been a Chinese contingent of fossickers in this exact area.

Below, I arrive at “Upper Slate Creek” which can be identified by the emerging formation of rock seams that has distinctive faults and cracks in long slabs that appear to have slate like properties rising from the creek bed.

Further down, the gully deepens and opens up like an ancient open cut quarry, hence “Slate Gully”.