What is Crookshanks?
Crookshanks’ property and farmhouse, and Crookshanks’ River Paddock, hereafter known as Crookshanks, make up the almost 800 hectares (ha) of mountainous country in the foothills of the Australian Snowy Mountains. We are 5 hours south of Sydney and 2 hours south of Canberra, the capital of Australia. The property is named (since 1996) after the surveyor who first mapped the region, and whose name is remembered from Crookshanks’ Peak (1,175 metres high) (coordinates -36.158790, 148.959520), which lies within its confines.
Almost 300 ha of the area is rocky, composed of fertile basalt soil made from the crumbling of basalt mountain ranges over millions of years. The mountain ranges were formed by lava flows from ancient and long inactive volcanoes. In these parts of the property, to the north-east, the swiftly flowing Murrumbidgee River at 800 metres above sea level, is fed by 2 spring-fed creeks. Wambrook Creek and Peak Creek flow variously, and strongly for most of the year. Wambrook Creek runs 4 km along the southern edge of Crookshanks, while Peak Creek winds its way in a tortured scribble of 8 kilometres underneath Crookshanks Peak through the middle of the mountain range.
The soil is rich and fertile in the east but the rainfall is low… in good years (La Nina) rather more than 500 mm per year, in drought years (El Nino) sometimes much less, as if it were a parched desert. Constant weed eradication over the last 27 years, and taking all sheep, cattle and goats from the paddocks since 2020 has improved not only the quality of the expansive and high quality native grasslands, but has also reduced the water run-off and reduced paddock erosion.
The 500 ha of mountainous slate and shale dry sclerophyll forest to the west is part of our conservation developments over the last 25 years.
Narelle Moody and John Boyd
February 2023
In the beginning of this Crookshanks’ adventure…
John Boyd first saw Crookshanks during the weekend of the Adaminaby Races in November 1998. John and I first met in the Commonwealth Department of Tourism, Science, Resources and of many other facets of Federal interest, when the Department (of 14 Divisions!) contracted me to organise and prepare its Annual Report to Parliament in 1998. I found John, who was representing the Division of Science, immediately interesting because of his explorations in the Burragorang Valley (where my father had owned, built and run the Commodore’s Ranch), his research background in Antarctica, and his connections with NASA over many years, including while studying for his Doctorate in aerospace physics at Fairbanks in Alaska. He was, and still is, a great storyteller! At the end of the year, I invited John to Crookshanks for the races. At the time, Crookshanks was still somewhat of a challenge, with sheep escaping through leaky fences and most of the necessary house renovations still to be planned. He seemed to feel comfortable at Crookshanks and stayed most weekends thereafter, moving in permanently on retirement, not long after.
I had found the land halfway through 1995. At 50, I was still hyperactive and energetic, and seeking a challenge. For years, I had been searching for a hidden, large, and mountainous block of land, with a house, to escape to in the evenings and at weekends from my working life as a counsellor, and later as a contract technical writer. Crookshanks’ Peak towered over the surrounding 700 plus hectares, rocky, mountainous, attractively wild, and neglected. Perfect! Noxious weeds, rabbits, a lot of rubbish, and a lot of work, said my well-wishers, friends, detractors, and the Council weeds’ inspector. Daunted a little, but loving working outside, I donned a spot-spraying backpack and set to it.
The love of my backpack and the love of killing weeds were the key to our later successes with growing trees… (Please refer to the pages on Crookshanks’ wildlife corridor.) John is also now an addicted weed sprayer!
Narelle Moody
February 2023