This is the reason why the town is here,
the pelletizing plant in the foreground, harbor behind that and the Steel
making plant behind that. Also there is a Rolling Mill off to the side and the
mine that feeds the whole catastrophe 60km away. The rusty red is the iron ore
dust. (Iron ore is basically rust) One entire end of the town is the same
colour and you can guess the colour of our house dust?
This is where the town started about 80
years ago and that’s why this is where the largest trees are found. Below the
protection of the hill is the town
Gardens (big trees) and
the town spread on the flats beyond that. (ancient floodplain)
That’s the sea there, several degrees warmer up
here in Spencer Gulf where the water is
shallow and the sun hot. It's also several percent more salty because of the
evaporation rate. (and also why we have a thriving salt pan industry) 
Outside the town
looking back. This is typical of the area, low hills with ancient floodplains
between, a few low bushes and hardy trees. At least we hardly ever got lost and
it's an awesome area for motorbike and 4WDing.
If I turn around to the North we see… more of the same across to the next hill 12km away. Australia originally had huge mountain ranges, over eons they wore away to dust. The dust washed toward the coasts making these huge sand and silt flats. We also have alluvial Gold and Diamonds…the hard part is finding them in all that sand.
..and from the top of that hill….
Typical of the better bits, the red sands
of central Australia
visible between the struggling Saltbush (light grey) and the darker and useless
Bluebush. (dark green/blue) Lucky for Australia *Saltbush is good Sheep food so
we managed to build a Wool and Meat trade from this. The trees both alive and
dead are Myall trees, long lived and so gnarled and hard you cant do anything
with them. (pretty much the only reason theyre still here)
* Saltbush tackles the hard salty soils and
horrible temperatures by excreting salt through their leaves to act as
sunscreen. You can (and we do) eat the leaves to increase your salt intake.
(only take leaves from the top of the bush where theres likely to be less pee)
You can tell the approximate age of the
Myall by their shape, this one is over 150 years but not yet 400 years old. Even
small fires will kill them and they need a good flood to create seeds, they
sometimes go 50 or more years between flowerings and seed setting. For these
reasons they are totally protected. The last big flowering was 1974 and I can
see the young trees from that year all around. (between 6 to 10 feet tall)
This older Myall is somewhere over 400 years but not yet 600 years old. To put that into perspective, Australia was settled in the 1770's, that’s less than 250 years ago when this tree was middle aged..
..and now I must tell you that these photos were taken in August 2012 at the end of our Winter (our rainy season) when the trees were at their best and every bush had put on it's next years growth.
I keep promising myself to go out in the 48-54Celcius Summer to get pics of what it's really like out here but I keep chickening out..besides, people really do die out there....
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