Down the Murranji Track

For almost a century, drovers moved cattle along the Murranji Track, despite scarce water, jungle-like scrub and its reputation as the ‘Death Track’.

Story by Darrell Lewis

There is something peculiarly fascinating about these long slow trips with a great mob of cattle across a whole continent” – so wrote a Northern Territory Times journalist in 1910, the heyday of the great droving trips from north-west Australia to Queensland and beyond. The stock routes used by the drovers crisscross Australia, but only three have achieved legendary status – the Canning, the Birdsville and the Murranji.
The Murranji Track runs from Top Springs in the Victoria River district to Newcastle Waters on the edge of the Barkly Tableland. While it only spans 245 kilometres, which when compared to the Canning and Birdsville routes is rather short, its waters were scarce and unreliable, and much of it was covered with great thickets of almost impenetrable bullwaddy and lancewood scrub. It was this ‘sinister soundless scrub’ – as described in 1951 by author Ernestine Hill in The Territory – that made the Murranji so dangerous. It became known to early drovers as the ‘Death Track’ or the ‘Suicide Track’ because of the number of people who died along its route.