22/10 Another day of exploring ! We decided to have a look around the northern Yorke Peninsula. After looking at the map and the local brochures we decided to drive to Moonta and Moonta Bay, Port Hughes, Wallaroo (which, by the way, is local aboriginal dialect for Wallaby pee (:-) ) and lastly Kadina. This is the largest center on the Yorke Peninsula.
These little fellas are everywhere
I find the Yorke peninsula staggering at this time of the year. Wherever you drive, as far as the eye can see, you see grain fields. It is beautiful; fields of Barley, Wheat, Pulses and Green fertilizers that get ploughed straight back into the paddock, no wonder they call this Australia’s food basket. I cannot express things better than the link below. There you will find all the facts and pictures for this area. The link takes you to one of the main pages. Explore the many fantastic links from there.
http://www.harvestcorner.com.au/#!farming/c84j
After an hour of driving through cropping farms we arrived in Moonta. The town has a central park with a generous grassy area and many shady old Fig trees and public facilities. This is a reasonable size centre which proudly displays its rich copper mining heritage in the many well maintained churches, official buildings and miner’s cottages.
Great architecture
Moonta square
School of Mines
Miner’s cottage
The history is proudly displayed also in an artist’s contribution in the form of a collection of mining related sketches that include a picture of Elizabeth Woolcock, the only woman to be executed ever in South Australia. See pic below:
Artists sketches of mining
Elizabeth Woolcock
An internet search will reveal the following in Wikipedia:
Elizabeth Woolcock (20 April 1848 – 30 December 1873) was born Elizabeth Lillian Oliver in Burra Burra and was hanged in Adelaide Gaol for the murder of her husband Thomas Wollcock by mercury poisoning.
As one drives through the suburbs of Moonta one arrives in Moonta bay. The large jetty here is well known for being a good fishing and squidding spot. Just down the road is Port Hughes, another lovely coastal gem that is expanding rapidly.
Massive Jetty at Moonta Bay
From there we drove through an increasingly arid landscape to the port of Wallaroo. I found the shipping terminal with its massive ship loading infrastructure fascinating. Wallaroo is also a base for the trawling fleet and if you like boats you will enjoy having a look at the trawlers there.
Kadina has the ‘larger town’ feel as you drive through the light industry areas leading into the town. It is a great town with good public facilities and we went for a walk and stretched our legs before we made our way back to Port Vincent. There we spent a pleasant afternoon on the beach swimming the dogs and soaking up the tranquility.
Port Vincent – even the fish like it!
