Although it had been extremely hot lately, during a cool break we went to visit Arltunga, an old gold mining area just north and east of Ross River. Although it was cloudy all day, the recent rains had brought out the flies, which is why you This was my first opportunity to test my new camera, a Canon Digital Rebel XTi.
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A common sight along the Arltunga road.
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Single-track outback road. Hey, at least it's paved!
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Closeup of roadside flower. These were very common, though I don't know their name.
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Brumby. Unfortunately this youngster has a bad hoof, and is lame. He gamely tries to keep up with the rest of his herd, though, and is in the same physical shape (just slightly ribby) as the rest of his group..
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Thought it was interesting how in sync these two are. I suspect the dark bay is the stallion, though they were really too far away to tell.
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No, I didn't pose them for this shot. Pretty neat tho, huh?
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Some shots of the outdoor exhibits at the Artlunga Visitors Centre. Wasn't a soul there but us - not even the ranger was around. Arltunga was the site of Central Australia's first town. In 1886 a surveyor "discovered" rubies in the nearby Hale river at Ruby Gap. Alas, they were garnets. In 1887 gold was discovered nearby. Stuart (now Alice Springs) was originally surveyed to supply the new Arltunga goldfield.
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Arltunga. The old Police Station and the gaol (jail), built in 1912 and reconstructed in 1985. It was pretty badly damaged as there'd been a rumor that gold was hidden in the station's walls.
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The big "building" is a wood-fired boiler, which provided the energy to crush the ore. The conditions out here were incredibly harsh. Much of the gold here was in quartz, which had to be hand-dug out of the rock, and crushed to extract the gold.
This area was the Government Battery and Cyanide Works, which opened in 1898.
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This appears to be all that's left of the battery, which is a huge machine used for crushing the ore to a fine silt. Gold was "filtered" out of it with mercury, then shaking, and the finest gold was extracted by leaving the silt in a cyanide solution, which would dissolve the gold and make it easy to extract from the tailings.
The buildings in the background were residences.
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An extremely creaky windmill at the Star of the North well - one of six wells on the Gov't Works site. This one was sunk in 1892
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This was the Managers residence, the biggest on the Gov't Works site. It has two rooms, and verandas front and back.
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A dragon of some type I stalked among the bushes. They may be small, but all the lizards in Australia are fast buggers - I was lucky this one was more interested in hiding than running. He's maybe 5 or 6" long.
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