Lake Hart Salt Mine

I loaded up the pictures for this about six weeks ago and have been sitting on them ever since, unable to write another blog post because I wanted to finish this one, but stuck.  I've got lots of other Central Australia stuff to blog about so I need to get on with it!

And I have just been to my first Geelong Fibre Forum and have lots of things to say about that too!

Lake Hart, South Australia, near Woomera.  It was the site of salt mining up until the 1930s and the salt was taken by rail on the Trans Continental Line to Sydney for domestic and industrial use.  It was supposed to be twice as 'salty' as other salt, and free of gypsum.

This pictures show a huge pile of bags of salt (7,00 tons originally, though I;m sure some of that has dissolved and disintegrated) that had just been left in situ since 1931 in the sun (and occasional rain). It is an astonishing sight, similar to an industrial ruin that had sunk into the landscape and taken on an organic form. The hessian bags have largely rotted away but have left their imprint on the salt, and are the reason for the odd drapey shapes in the pile.

The railway line is still there though the trains don't go there any more, obviously.

Amazing skies over a dead flat landscape - taken over the lake.

Salt.  It wasn't until I tasted it that I believed it was salt, it must have melted and resolidified countless times over the decades.

It was a haunting landscape and a poignant reminder of the death of a once lucrative industry.

Blogtoberfest 8

This sort of follows on the theme of yesterday.  I found this in the Pioneer Village at Swan Hill, on the Murray River and the border of Victoria.  It's a portable vault used by funeral directors in the country in the past, and I presume it was filled with ice to keep the deceased, er, 'fresh' in the searing heat that happens up there.

Blogtoberfest 7

Wentworth is a NSW town not far over the border from Mildura.  It's a hot, dry, dusty town and it's main claim to fame is its gaol, long since defunct as an actual penitentiary.  It's a museum now.  Last time I visited it, over 20 years ago, you could dress up in costumes and be photographed in a cell, and somewhere I probably have a photo of me doing just that (must find that one!)

It's an interesting glimpse of social history.  For quite some time after the gaol ceased its original function, it was used as a school.  Small changes were made - a pink peppercorn tree was planted in the old exercise yard to provide shade for the children (somewhere I think there must be an ancient statute that decrees that every Australian school must have a pink peppercorn tree in the yard somewhere) - but on the whole they used the old gaol facilities.  I wonder how that felt!

I was amused by the mortuary slab, just lying on the floor in a room, with the handwritten notice.