Living in a hallway: October 2023

Wallaroo 18/10-20/10

We have arrived in Wallaroo which is a small coastal town at the top of the Yorke Peninsula. To get to the caravan park you drive through a housing estate where everyone has their own mooring. According to one of the locals, most of them are Holiday shacks.

After setting up camp we hopped on our bikes and rode into town, we plan to do the rail trail ride while we're here. On our trip around town, we rode down the jetty where all the fishermen were. It looks like squid is the main catch here. The jetty is also used by the grain ships that come into port. Harvest is in full swing at the moment there's a ship waiting to come into port to be loaded.

Old post office

Town Hall

Thursday has turned out to be a warm day so we have decided to leave the rail trail until Friday. We drove into Wallaroo and walked around the old part of town. There are lots of stone houses here and it's very reminiscent of the dock areas around Melbourne in the past. Wallaroo used to be a port for the copper and lead mining industry, there was a large smelter complex close to the port.

As it was warm we had the odd pit stop at the local Hotels scattered around town.

Today we rode from Wallaroo to Kadina on the rail trail, the trail starts near the town hall and the ride is about 8km's. It follows the old tramway that was used to bring the copper from the mines to the smelter and port. The Tramway started off horse-drawn in 1862. They didn't use steam until 1878.

Miners homes.

A Bosses house?

During our ride, we passed several people who commute on their bikes to Kadina. To our surprise the postman uses it as well, he has a three-wheeled electric bike with his favourite tunes blasting out.

The trail to Kadina.

We passed the old racecourse which started in the 1870s, the grandstand and part of the stables remain. Racing finished there in the 1960s and the Kadina Wallaroo Jockey Club ended in 1982.

Racecourse

We spent our time in Kadina exploring the town and checking out the shops, we had lunch at the pub before starting our trip back. On the way back we stopped off at one of the older parts of Kadina near the old mine site to see if we could get closer to the old mine buildings, unfortunately, they were fenced off, so we continued our journey back to Wallaroo.

The Park

Kadina Town Hall. (still on EST)

We had never seen the silo movies before Quorn and now there is another one here in Wallaroo, we dropped in to watch part of it on our final evening it was a poor imitation of the one at Quorn as it was mainly advertising.

Leaving Wallaroo.

Port Hughes (Moonta) 21/10-23/10

We left Wallaroo with the intention of moving further south down the peninsula. On the way we decided to check out Moonta which is only 20 minutes from Wallaroo and we realised that there is a lot that interests us here so we stopped and camped in Port Hughes to spend some time exploring Moonta. Moonta is an old copper mining town that was settled by Cornish miners. After settling in at the caravan park we did a drive around Port Hughes and Moonta Bay which are basically housing estates. (Nothing to see here). In the afternoon we followed the heritage walk around Moonta admiring the old stone buildings and houses.

Moonta Town Hall

Grand old home.

There are quite a few old Post Boxes around town.

Local Park

1860s cottages.

This morning we headed to the Moonta Mines precinct a state heritage area looked after by the National Trust. From 1861-1923 it was the centre of the copper mining industry. Moonta has a strong connection with Cornwall, Cornish miners were encouraged to settle in the area for their mining skills. We had a ride on the Moonta Mines tourist train, a 50-minute guided tour of the Moonta Mines site. We then visited the Moonta Mines museum which is in the Moonta Mines School. It was built in 1871 to educate the children of the cornish miners.

Hughes pump house

Richmond Engine House

Copper leaching out of the tailings heap.

There is a large Methodist church still in use today, it was built in 1865 holds 1,250 people, and has a beautiful pipe organ. To fit all the parishioners in the church a mezzanine level was built with seating. One of the mine captains Henry Richard Hancock was a devout Wesleyan Methodist and expected all his workers to attend church, if you did not attend church you were sacked.

Church on Sunday or sacked on Monday.

After the museum, we popped across the road to the little old post office which is now a lolly shop and then we walked around the mining site and saw the remains of the old engine houses, we then climbed to the top of the tailing heaps which has a lookout at the top. In 1900 the cementation process was introduced to leach out the copper from the tailing heaps. They would pour seawater over the heaps, this would leach out copper sulphate. It was then channeled into ponds which were filled with scrap iron. The copper would stick to the iron and could be extracted.

Lollies.

Miners cottage.

Our final day in Port Hughes (Moonta) was a relaxing one, we hung around camp reading and then in the afternoon, we walked along the beach from the Port Hughes Jetty to the Moonta Bay Jetty. At each end there are refreshments so we didn't get thirsty. It was amazing how in only a few kilometers the beach changed from really soft and sandy at Port Hughes to rocky conglomerate rocks around Moonta Bay.

Port Hughes pier.

Moonta bay beach

Beach walking.

Yorketown 24/10-25/10

The weather turned nasty overnight and it's now cool and windy, we travelled to Yorketown today via Maitland where we had coffee and cake, a drive through Port Victoria, and have now settled in Yorketown. Yorketown is surrounded by 200 salt lakes and has a history of salt mining. We visited one of the pink lakes as we explored the town after lunch.

Yorketown Pink Saltlake.

The weather has not improved. It's showery, windy, and cold. Today is a driving day. We started out with a visit to the water tank mural in Yorketown then headed to Stansbury a little fishing town on the Gulf of St Vincent. As we came into Stansbury there was another water tank mural.

We started the history walk around town but it started to rain so we got back in the car and headed down the coast to Wool Bay where there is an old Lime Kiln. The kiln was built between 1900 and 1910 and was used for burning lime. It was a draw kiln using wood and was not a great success due to the cliff-top location and variation in the wind conditions that caused problems. Lime was a significant industry on the Yorke Peninsula until the 1950s. The Wool Bay Jetty is nearby and lime was sent to Adelaide by boat.

Lime Kiln.

Wool Bay.

Edith the horse at Edithburgh.

Our next stop was Edithburgh a town about the same size as Yorketown. Edithburgh was a port for transporting grains and salt from the salt lakes. Further, around the coast, we drove past the Wattle Point Wind Farm and then into the Troughbridge Hill Aquatic Reserve this section of the coast is on Investigator Strait and quite rocky. We stopped off at the Troughbridge Hill Lighthouse which was built in 1980.

Diamond lake.

Pink Lake.

Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park 26/10-28/10

Hoorary the weather has improved. We are staying in the campground at Stenhouse Bay in the Innes National Park. It was only an hour's drive from Yorketown but we are now at the very tip of the York Peninsula. As we arrived quite early in the day we took a walk down to the Stenhouse Jetty where fishermen were busy trying to catch some fish. As luck would have it the fish were biting and a young chap caught one as we were heading back to shore. We think it was a Wrasse and quite a good size as well.

Before this area was a National Park it was a mining area for gypsum. The gypsum was mined from Marion Lake nearby and transported to Stenhouse Bay. A settlement was here until 1973 when the mine was closed where Gypsum was loaded onto ships. There is a V carved into the cliff top where the gypsum was poured into a shute and stored before being transported to ships.

Dad and the Kids.

We then went back to camp and drove into Marion Bay a small fishing village outside the National Park on our drive around Marion Bay we came across some emus on the road. The father emu looks after the chicks and has quite a few with him. They were split across different sides of the road. We stopped so the chicks could cross the road and one went straight under the car.

Stenhouse Bay.

When we returned to camp we decided to do the Stenhouse Bay lookout walk before settling in for tea.

It was a short 1-hour walk around the clifftops and through low coastal heath. It was hard to believe that the area was totally cleared 50 years ago. There are remnants of the Stenhouse Bay settlement and tramway that used to bring the gypsum and plaster from Inneston to the jetty at Stenhouse Bay.

Gypsum Train.

The wind has calmed and the sun is out. Today we walked the Thomson-Pfitzner Plaster Trail to the former town of Inneston. They mined Gypsum here from 1913 until 1973 The track we followed is the old railway line which initially was a tramway. Horses would pull the wagons loaded with gypsum and plaster to the Stenhouse Jetty.

The walk was a 7km return trip and a 2km circuit around the town. Some of the old buildings have been restored and they can booked for holidays. While we were wandering around the town, the SA Parks were doing a prescribed burn near the lake and the fire helicopter came in to land so it wasn't a peaceful walk.

Rusty Carts

Prescribed burn.

Bakery ruins.

One of the most interesting buildings was the Bellco Chalk Factory which opened in 1922. Anyone who went to school before 1980 when classrooms had blackboards would remember the boxes of Bellco Chalk at school. This little factory produced all the chalk and it was sent from Stenhouse Jetty to all the schools in Australia.

Belco Chalk Factory.

I wonder what tree this is from? They burn well.

It's not from a tree Knucklehead.

It's windy again today so instead of walks we took a drive along the coast within the National Park. Our first stop was the Cape Spencer lighthouse where we took in the spectacular coastline views.

Cape Spencer

Cape Spencer lighthouse.

hen on to Ethel Beach where we were nearly blown over because the wind was so strong. As we descended the steps down the cliff to the beach the wind was not as bad. On the beach is the wreck of the Ethel. She was built in 1876 as a 711-tonne, a 3-masted ship that was travelling from South Africa and ran aground in 1904 during a storm.

The Ethel Wreck.

Further around the coast at Pandalowie beach we walked along the boardwalk to the beach, there is a more recent wreck of a fishing boat the O U Dog which washed up on the beach around 2006. There isn't much information about it.

O U Dog

Our last stop was Shell Beach a nice little cove and a more sheltered beach. A few fishermen were here trying their luck surf fishing.

Shell Beach.

On our final day on the Yorke Peninsula, we left the Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park and travelled up the coast towards Balaklava where we will be staying for the next couple of days. The first stop was Port Vincent a cute fishing town that reminded us of Tumby Bay (from our last SA trip). We decided to stop at Ardrossan for lunch and really lucked in as they were celebrating their 150-year anniversary. There was a Fantastic kite display and some good old cars, along with a guy playing covers from the 70's and 80's.