Glen Osmond mines
Small hiatus there. What have I been doing in the last 10 days?
Well, working, obviously. It’s a job that always takes time to get used to, but I think I’m probably going to enjoy it overall. And I’ve started to go out of Adelaide.
I spent a weekend walking – well, OK a Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I cycled up Glen Osmond (45 minutes slog up, 5 minutes down: no pedalling), which is the hill that overlooks Glenside and the S-Eastern suburbs. Walking is dificult in that there is a distinct lack of maps which are detailed enough to plan a route properly and have faith that the tracks are there. However, if you know where to go, there are a lot of trails marked. So when I got up there, it was possible to do a circular walk – up the glen (sun, birds, butterflies etc). Actually it is beautiful. Through groves of Eucalypts, past the wattle with yellow pom-pom flowers that smell of licorice (probably an acquired like). It’s all pretty well inhabited up there (lovely houses with a view over the city to the sea), and the path eventually goes to the cutting where the motorway runs through. Imagine the M40 cut, but in red not chalk. Actually, like so much, the countryside is so familiar yet so strange – from a distance the scapes and the trees are just like home, and it’s only when you get close that you realise that the silver bark is on a mallee, not a beech tree. And the flowers are all equivalent to home. So there are daisy-type things, a sort of vetch... you get the picture. Oh, and a bright yellow oxalis EVERYWHERE. (Ever seen my front garden in P’boro?)
Anyway, Glen Osmond is also famous for wheal Watkins and Wheal Gawler, the first metal mines in Aus, and the site of the first smelting. See, they do have heritage here. Or at least two tunnel entrances and an old bluestone (which of course isn’t blue at all) quarry.
Well, working, obviously. It’s a job that always takes time to get used to, but I think I’m probably going to enjoy it overall. And I’ve started to go out of Adelaide.
I spent a weekend walking – well, OK a Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I cycled up Glen Osmond (45 minutes slog up, 5 minutes down: no pedalling), which is the hill that overlooks Glenside and the S-Eastern suburbs. Walking is dificult in that there is a distinct lack of maps which are detailed enough to plan a route properly and have faith that the tracks are there. However, if you know where to go, there are a lot of trails marked. So when I got up there, it was possible to do a circular walk – up the glen (sun, birds, butterflies etc). Actually it is beautiful. Through groves of Eucalypts, past the wattle with yellow pom-pom flowers that smell of licorice (probably an acquired like). It’s all pretty well inhabited up there (lovely houses with a view over the city to the sea), and the path eventually goes to the cutting where the motorway runs through. Imagine the M40 cut, but in red not chalk. Actually, like so much, the countryside is so familiar yet so strange – from a distance the scapes and the trees are just like home, and it’s only when you get close that you realise that the silver bark is on a mallee, not a beech tree. And the flowers are all equivalent to home. So there are daisy-type things, a sort of vetch... you get the picture. Oh, and a bright yellow oxalis EVERYWHERE. (Ever seen my front garden in P’boro?)
Anyway, Glen Osmond is also famous for wheal Watkins and Wheal Gawler, the first metal mines in Aus, and the site of the first smelting. See, they do have heritage here. Or at least two tunnel entrances and an old bluestone (which of course isn’t blue at all) quarry.
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