Precious metals.

Today we are at Cobar, we called in on the way through to the centre but it was pouring with rain and we saw nothing. We gave ourselves two nights so that we would have a full day to check out the place and the weather was kind to us this time around.
Cobar is a town that has grown and evaporated a couple of times thanks to the volatile nature of the demand for copper and gold. At the moment it is a fairly prosperous little town and is riding on the mining boom once again.

Our explorations took us first to a large gold mine that initially looks like an open cut mine but it is a huge hole in the ground with a road that allows an easy gradient for the heavy machinery that drives into the hole at the bottom (Yellow arrow points to the entrance) The seam that contains the gold can be seen where the white arrows indicate where old mines have been exposed, I am assuming that they were hand dug and had buckets that were hauled up through a shaft to take the ore to the surface.

At a park opposite the Information Office is a memorial to the miners who lost their lives in mining accidents in Cobar and this imposing life-size miner working at an ore face shows how work was done in the past. Computerized machinery does the hard work these days.

There must have been plenty of gold in “them thar hills” because an information board had a photograph of one of the gold stampers. I have been to other gold mining towns where they have had ten stampers or fewer so fifty is a huge quantity! The ore was smashed into dust by the stampers and the water would wash the dust over a bed that was filled with mercury. Gold is heavier than crushed rock and sinks into the mercury while the water washes the rock off and into a pit. At the end of the crushing the mercury is scraped off the plates and put into a crucible and evaporated (?) over heat to release the gold. (If I have this wrong, please let me know!)

A visit to a working copper mine was fascinating, we were taken in a small bus around the outside of the working area and could only take our photos from behind the windows of the bus. I couldn't help being amazed at the store of huge tyres in a shed dedicated to this task. We were told that these tyres are hard to come by so when they are available a big order is made so that they are on hand for when they are needed.

Apart from lots of facts and figures giving quantities and and percentages (which went in one ear and out the other) we were shown the complex arrangement of tanks and pipes that are part of the method of separating/refining the copper from the ore. It was all very impressive.

Even more impressive is the number of pubs in Cobar! These miners are obviously a thirsty lot! The smart Great Western Hotel is named after one of the Gold Mines. I couldn't resist taking a photograph of it – it has the longest iron lacework veranda I have seen.

AJ

Wilcannia, gone but not quite forgotten

When we drove through Wilcannia on the way to Broken Hill I was determined to stop there on the way back home and have a better look at the place. Wilcannia was once a busy inland port on the River Darling. I will quote from one of the sign boards by the river.

“By 1880 Wilcannia had 3,000 people and 13 hotels . . . . In 1887, 218 steamers (they would have been paddle-steamers) unloaded 36,000 tons of stores and shipped wool and other produce away weighing 26,000 tons.”

I am not sure of the population of Wilcannia today but it cannot be very great judging by the number of derelict homes and shops.

There are some very grand buildings. The Post Office caught my attention along with the adjoining house with the iron lacework on the veranda. Both are empty. In fact most of the sandstone buildings, which are in good order, are empty. But unlike deserted buildings in a city these are not vandalised and the glass is still intact in the windows. Very dirty and impossible to see through but intact! When were were at Peterborough and we told people we were going to Wilcannia we were warned not to stop there for the night as it was not a safe town to stay in. Having spent a couple of hours on foot exploring the town with my camera – on my own, I think that the reputation of the town is worse than the actuality of the situation. I did see a few aborigines but they seemed to be at neat homes with gardens filled with flowers. There were a few other tourists that stopped after seeing me wandering around and they took their cameras out and followed my lead. Colin found a traveller to chat to and was not even aware of my disappearance!

Wilcannia is on the River Darling and the old iron bridge with the centre lift is still there but is no longer in use – the road now goes over a boring (but safe) concrete bridge that runs alongside the old centre lift bridge. The centre needed to be raised to allow the steamers to pass under it. It has been a long time since there has been enough water in the river for such large steamers to run on. This year has brought the water back to the rivers.

We searched for evidence of the port or wharf but could only find a couple of metal structures that could have been used to winch heavy stuff from the bank to the steamers and vice versa. From that old photo I copied it looks as if the boats merely pulled into the bank to be loaded and unloaded.

A walk down the street on the other side of the highway gave me a surprise, I found several pieces of artwork displayed not far from the pavement. There was nothing to indicate who had made them or when they had been commissioned or bought and they had some extra art work added to them in the form of painted “tags” but that somehow added to the character of the pieces!

I am glad that we stopped here for a couple of hours, I would have been disappointed if we had shot straight through again!
AJ

Living underground

A couple of people have asked me to tell them more about sleeping underground in a dugout in Coober Pedy so I thought I would tell you a little more about life in the caves.

The idea of digging out a hole and converting it into a home began after the first world war when soldiers who had spent time digging trenches in France and Germany and the Middle East. joined the rush to get rich in the opal fields. They had quite primitive dugouts with ledges for lamps and recesses hacked into the walls of their cave for extra space to put their kerosene tin dressing tables and wardrobes in.

These two photos were not really taken to be stitched together but I let Photoshop merge them anyway. The colour is a bit different left to right but ignore that and you will see the dugout that was made in a mine(this is in the Old Timers Mine and the original dugout is still as it was - but the old timer has been replaced!

This is an example of a lounge room in a modern dugout. Colin took this but the room is so large that the flash did not reach the area he was aiming to. I have brightened it as much as I dare but it is still rather dark. I hope you can make out the furniture and the patterning created by the machine that they now use to cut the very hard rock that the mines and homes are dug into.

Coober Pedy is incredibly hot during the summer and freezing cold at night in the winter but in the rock dugouts the temperature remains a constant 24 degrees regardless of what the outside weather is doing. But the dugouts are in solid rock, so without ventilation the air would soon become stale. So every room has a hole to the surface through the “ceiling” and a chimney of sorts sits above this opening so that it is higher than the earth surface to prevent dust and small rocks falling down the chute into the room below. The hole is quite large – not large enough to crawl up but about ten inches or more in diameter.

There are homes that are above ground but they have to be heated in the winter and have air-conditioners running night and day in the long summers. Roughly half the population still live in underground homes, some are a combination of above ground and underground. It very much depends on the prosperity of the home owner. Tourists are well catered for with underground rooms but there are above ground ones for those who think they would be claustrophobic underground.

This is the long bunkhouse in which Colin and I spent three very pleasant nights. Our little recess is at the left of the picture - you nearly cannot see it, the rest stretches back such a long way so the cutting machine would have first made the passage way tunnel and then worked from it to cut each of the cubicles into the rock at the sides. The rock is so hard that there is no need for props and support beams. (This is why we didn't put up our tent, our tent pegs would not have gone into this rock!)
When the lights are out it is dark – very dark! Fortunately for us, we were in a cubicle in a long bunkhouse that was right at the front and near the door that had a window in it. So we had a light outside that glowed through the window and in the morning the daylight was able to brighten the entrance enough for us to know it was morning. We did not feel at all claustrophobic and slept well in our underground hide away.

The surfaces of the rock in our bunkhouse had been sprayed with a clear lacquer that stopped too much dust from floating around – but when we went through that Old Timers Mine we were almost choking with the dust we had breathed in during our 40 minutes of walking through the mine and the dugout living area.

After only a week of being in Central Australia in the very dry air, the skin around my finger tips is split and torn and my hair and nails are brittle. This is very much a place to bring your hand-cream and moisturiser!

AJ

Peterborough

This is a little friendly town that grew because of the railways. Here the gauges of rails changed and goods had to be manhandled from one steam train and loaded into carriages on another on different width rails. I am afraid I am not as interested in the technicalities of the rail tracks as some people are so I will skip over the details and you can look them up yourself! There is plenty to find, using Google.

A “Y” class loco has been tidied up and put into a display for a feature in the main street. We actually missed seeing it the first time we drove through because it is set back a little from the pavement.

Another notable feature of the town is the number of pubs! There must be a lot of thirsty people living here! The town used to be very much larger because of the number of people employed on the railways – imagine the number of people required to shovel coal from the coal trains on one width of track to another set of wagons on a train on wider tracks. We watched one of the trains heading up to the coal mines and it must have been three kilometers long. In days of steam the length would not have been as great but they would still have been pretty long.

After reading about it from research on the 'net I just had to go and see a little place called “Meldonfield”. This is a private home with a retired couple that has developed a hobby into a paying tourist attraction. Eldon is the coach builder – he hand craft's 12th scale models of wagons and carriages and his wife, Mary, creates the little people that ride on the carriages or tell the story about the carriage.

This picture is of one of the Indian hawkers that travelled the country selling goods. The farms and stations and small country towns depended on these people to bring them such things as material for clothing, cottons and farm hand tools.

A big (very big) project that Eldon has now completed, is the construction of a scale model of the original Peterborough railway station that had been demolished thirty years earlier and the bricks dumped in a dry creek bed. What is incredible is that this couple gathered up some of the bricks and with a brick saw cut them into 12th scale bricks and from these bricks constructed this amazing replica using the original architects plans to do so.

Foolishly the Council of Peterborough will not create a place to house this in the main street where it would be of interest to tourists, so it will remain at the home of the Zimmermans. For a reason that I cannot understand, there is unwillingness to let it go to the big steam museum “Steamtown”.

Being interested in gardens I dragged Colin along to the Dragon Gardens. This area has very little rainfall and I was totally blown away with the variety of plants the owners have been able to grow. The colour and layout was stunning. Unfortunately the man of the house fell through a roof only yesterday and has a couple of broken ribs and is very unwell at the moment so our hostess had to keep disappearing to check up on him. We quietly enjoyed her efforts and took quite a lot of photos. I even found a few dragons!

I thought you might be more interested in seeing them than seeing the flowers!

AJ

Outback travel.

I have skipped so much of our travels in this blog that I am back tracking to show you a little more of the country and of what we saw. The Australian Outback is a very dry, dusty and desolate place for most of the time and even though there is lots of plant cover at the moment the vast open spaces are still quite awe inspiring. Very much a place in which you would not want to get stuck, that's for sure!

When we left Coober Pedy we were driving for a while on hard gravel. The ground around Coober Pedy is mostly compressed silica and it is almost impossible to drive in a tent peg – which is why were were offered underground accommodation. So to begin with the roads were firm and flat even though there had been a fall of rain before we had arrived there that had closed many of the outback roads.

I couldn't resist this shot out of the window and through the mirror to show the dust raising behind us. We were fortunate that we were on the right side of the road when it came to passing another vehicle – our dust was drifting across the road and it was the on-coming traffic that could not see past our dust! That fine dust did manage to get inside the trailer and cover all our plastic containers but the containers were tight enough to keep the contents dust free. They contained all our pots and pans and kitchen equipment.

After a few hours of travel we encountered a group of emu. They were a little distance off so I wound down the window and banged on the side of the vehicle then waved my arm outside the window. They stopped and came closer and closer to see what was happening. Up came the camera and here is my shot. (one of them!)

In our treeless travels we were very grateful to the awning that Steven had purchased for his vehicle only days before we set off from home. When we found a “beach” near Lake Eyre South we set up our shade so that we could look over the dry sea bed and take advantage of the light breeze as we ate our sandwiches.

In the dry heat of the day the sandwiches had to be made as they were needed because the bread was like toast by the time you bit into the second half! We have two car fridges with us so we had moist sliced meats and salads to use as fillings. We even have home made fruit cake for dessert when we feel like a bit extra!
Near a little town called Leigh Creek we saw a sign to a coal mine lookout. Since it wasn't too far to go (this was when the vehicle was still a very sick animal) we went for a look.

What a massive hole in the ground! The lookout was over an area that had been finished and in the parking area was a huge dragline that had been retired. A wonderful big toy for the boys to climb into and look through. In front of it was a gigantic wheel that had been removed from something and both Colin and I posed for photos inside the rim! In the background you can see part of the dragline – it looks like a big crane on its side.

Today has been spent in a little town called Peterborough and I will write a little something about two of the places we visited there in my next jottings.

AJ

A true traveller

There are so many things I could tell you about – each day is filled with new experiences and sights and I really should write everything down. But we passed a very special individual today and I am sure that you would be really interested to see pictures and hear a little about him.

Unfortunately my driver did not give me time to hop out and really ask questions – and I would really have liked to – so I do not know this man's name.
I had to beg Colin to slow down and stop when I saw something quite unique on the road ahead. I could see two camels pulling a little trailer. I am sure that Colin just sees the road!

I hastily wound down the window and took my first shot.

I asked the net covered man where he was headed “Here and there” he replied in a strong European accent (at a guess, Yugoslavian) “where ever the road leads us and which ever way my camels take me”.

How long have you been on the road? “ Eight years now.”

Do you sleep in your little van? “ Oh no, I sleep in the open next to my camels, the sky is my roof”

And that was all I had time to ask him before my driver put his foot down and took us on our way. Three photographs and three questions – but an impression of a contented person. He was doing what he wanted and he was happy with his lot.

The man had stopped when we pulled alongside him and was happy to talk to me but when the camels both lurched forward together he started again on his slow walk along the road. They must be female camels, they determine when they leave and how long they stop!

AJ

Dusty outback roads

Today was our first full day of travel on unsealed roads. The stretch between Coober Pedy and William Creek must have been very exciting to drive along three days ago, as soon as it was “open”. The ground looks as if it was not only slippery but very soft too. We stopped to take pictures of the state of the road and I am sharing one of them. Apparently if anyone drives down a road that is officially “closed” they are met at the end of the track by the police and there is a fine of one thousand dollars for every tyre that is on the road.

Our journey was not a fast one – after all we are on holiday and my purpose for being on this trip is to take photographs. At one of the creeks – which is now dry as a bone – I wandered down to see what it looked like (we had stopped for a cup of tea and all I had in my hand was my tea mug), when I stopped under one of the oddly shaped trees and looked up I soon retreated to the vehicle to get my camera. I changed the lens so I could zoom in because what I saw were two budgerigar. I spent a little time taking more photos while several four wheel drives with camper trailers zipped past and all gave cheery waves. No doubt grateful that they had no-one in their vehicle that was as photo-mad as me! The birds were not afraid of my proximity. I thought they would have gone by the time I returned with the camera but they were exactly where I had first seen them.

I walked a little further along the sandy creek bed after I had exhausted all the shot angles with them and found a bird feeding her youngster. Again they did not seem to mind me being below them and pointing a big black camera in their direction – the food exchange just continued as energetically as before I had reached them.

Budgies are native to Australia and are always green with yellow heads. This is their normal colouring. The blues and whites and different colours are created by breeders of tame birds. We used to have hundreds of Budgerigars when we lived on the farm but the sprays that were developed to kill the grasses that grew among the wheat was responsible for their disappearance. The spray was residual which meant that the grass seeds were unable to germinate and the grasses did not grow – good for wheat farmers but bad for the birds that used to exist on their seeds.

Apart from the budgerigars and ground larks that were quite numerous, we saw no more wildlife today. It is amazing that you can travel so many hundred kilometers and not see one emu, one kangaroo or one lizard or snake. There was plenty of colour: lots of greenery and plenty of colourful wildflowers.

We have a hazard light that tells us our new fuel filter is choked up. We must have some very dirty fuel in our tank. This has so distressed us that we will try to find somewhere that has the filter we need (we hope that we can actually get there without the motor seizing up) and then we shall head home as directly as we can. We did not drive out to Lake Eyre as we had wanted too – we could have been stranded out there and that frightened both of us. Nothing is worth taking that sort of risk for.

AJ