This week, with the weather so wet and rainy, Roy decided it was a perfect day to look through some of the photos from our recent trip to the Upper Hunter. He loved this area, and can't wait to go back. It was a beautiful place, with lots of history and lots of extraordinary scenery to look at. There were wonderful things to discover in so many places, and one which gave Roy a little surprise was the Dingo Gate.
The Dingo Gate is at the Western extreme of Barrington Tops Plateau in the Upper Hunter Valley, NSW. To reach the gate, and the fence it connects to, you can drive either from Scone, through Moonan and up the winding road or from Gloucester and through Barrington Tops itself. You can also complete the drive between Gloucester and Scone. The road is unsealed for much of the way, but is usually quite well maintained. Make sure to look out for animals like cows and goats on the road, as you will be driving through farms on the stretch between Scone and the Dingo Gate. If you drive through the Dingo Gate, make sure to shut it behind you!
You might wonder why there is a Dingo Gate at Barrington Tops. Many of the people Roy knows don't realise that there are actually any Dingos, or native dogs (possibly bought to Australia by the Aborigines), in NSW. In the 1880s a dingo proof fence was built in Australia to keep the dingos out and it extends from the Southern parts of Queensland right across to South Australia. However, although this does largely protect NSW from dingos, there is a gap at the very edge of the fence, where it connects to the East Coast. Dingos are nearly completely absent in most of NSW, but there is a strip of land along the East of NSW which does still have them, extending down from the gap in the Dingo Fence. Some of these dingos apparently live on the Barrington Tops Plateu.
The Dingo Fence and Gate at Barrington Tops are not part of the larger Dingo Fence. The Upper Hunter area has been used for farming essentially since it was established as a 'white settlement'. Driving through the countryside, and along some of the roads which pass through farmers paddocks, you will get up close and personal to cows, sheep, goats and horses. In the earlier days of farming, dingos were a real problem. They came onto the farms and killed the animals. Farmers killed many of the dingos to stop the raids, which is why there are so few dingos in many parts of NSW. Later though, in this area, they realised that they could use fences to keep the dingos off the farms. The Dingo Gate and the fence on the Western edge of the Barrington Tops Plateau was built to keep the dingos inside the park and off the surrounding properties.
