The days are great, sunny, clear some clouds, but warm. The overnight temperatures have been up there as well. It is very enjoyable autumn weather. The sun was so comforting that this rabbit just sat and sat on the track enjoying the sunshine. I was able to walk up quite close to get this photo.
Below is a map of our circuit drive. Our camping neighbours set off on the drive yesterday and got lost – having our live tracking mapping is a bonus as we can happily take tracks as we know where they are going. All the park roads have been graded as was this back track through to Arkaroola. We went clockwise.
On a ridge on the track there were a lot of these bushes growing with fruit on them. The berries were green to yellow to black. There were some nasty prickles on the bushes and it did not appear that anything was eating the berries. I suspect they are poisonous. I couldn’t find them listed in the bush tucker book.
We are on top of a ridge, there is quite a different in the opposite sides.
I took these at the same spot as the panorama. The one of the right is looking further back than in the panorama.
This photo is further left than the above left and is zoomed in to the rock feature. There were lots of rolling hills and then it opened out into large tracts of flat grazing land.
We saw only a few kangaroos and euros and some emu – not many considering the distance we travelled.
We then entered on to Arkaroola Conservation Park and stopped to have a look at the Bolang Bolango smelting works.
This beautifully finished round dwelling was at the start of the way into the smelting works. We couldn’t figure out what it was for – and thought it was probably for storing munitions, but the chimney in the centre had us confused. It did not seem to have had firings in there.
The remains of the smelter with the slag heaps in the foreground. The ventilation shaft to the smelter. Copper would have been smelted here. We wondered if the copper from Monarch Mine came here. There wasn’t very much copper lying around and the little we found was only a trace, nothing like the pieces we saw at the mine.
We saw keep holes in the brickwork of the ventilation shaft and then saw a railway sleeper still set in – again we don’t know how they covered the shaft. There were plenty of bricks which were probably made on site to build the smelter.
We drove into Arkaroola village to enquire about camping – the staff were very informative and friendly and helpful. We are moving up to there tomorrow as there are a lot of things to do in the conservation park. Arkaroola is 610 square kms. Reg Sprigg purchased the property in the 1960’s to return it to its wilderness state.
No comments:
Post a Comment