Mount Doreen Ruins - NT

Located just off the Tanami Track in the Northern Territory, the Mt Doreen station ruins provides visitors with an interesting place to explore and even bush camp. The station was named after Doreen Braitling, wife of Bill Braitling who ran the station in the 1920s. The homestead was abandoned due to poor water supply and Bill died in 1959. Doreen moved to Alice Springs and built a name for herself being active in the National Trust. Doreen Braitling died in 1979.

To access the area, go just beyond the rocky outcrops that are similar but smaller than the Devils Marbles, and look out for an unmarked track on the RHS of the road. Once you've found the track follow it around behind the distinctive looking mountain and you can spend half a day exploring before/after setting up camp in the river bed beyond the bore pond about 1.5km from the Tanami Track. Animals use the bore pond so do not camp there.
My mum Erna Goerke was the station cook and my dad the station hand in 1956/57. Bill and Doreen's son Wally I am led to believe, relocated the homestead to Vaughan Springs where water was plentiful. In our time there, Mt Doreen as I remember carried large numbers of cattle, and lots of wild camels. Many aborigines lived and worked on the station, and I have fond memories of their affection and protectiveness of the white station staff, especially us young children. The station was the set off point of an expedition led by Dr. Horseman a philanthropist from the Melbourne Uni and near Lake Mackay in about 1957 were I believe the first white people to have contact with the Pintubi tribe. My dad, Fred Goerke, now 82 and living in Mildura, accompanied the expedition from the station, and actually brought back an aborigine youth for serious campfire burns treatment. A small amount of Wolfram and gold mining was conducted on the hill near the homestead. Supplies were trucked in every few months via Yuendemu Mission from Alice Springs along a very basic dirt track, and was about a weeks return trip for the 300 hundred odd miles each way.