Flinders Follies
We took mum on a couple of short drives out from Alpana station.
The first drive was relatively straight forward. A gravel road that loops through Blinman, Glass Gorge, Parachilna Creek, Angorichina and back to Blinman. Nina and Emily where tagging along behind in the Amarok. Glass gorge is a narrow winding gorge where the creek rapidly drops down from the hills to a more flat open plain. You then head to the ABC range, wind through creek beds and finally hook up to the Blinman-Parachilna road near Angorichina village.
The second drive to Nuccaleena Copper Mine ruins was much more demanding. This time it was just Mum and me in the Touareg. It started out ok just winding through a wide creek bed. When the track rose out of the creek you hit small hills that were entirely made of crumbled slate. It was at this point I realised that the tyre pump and repair stuff was in the back of the Amarok back at Alpana. Not able to reduce the tyre pressure we continued carefully slowly winding the 15kms to the old mine.
It was quite a setup with over 80 people working there at its peak. It pulled out about 16,000 pounds worth of copper and was the biggest mine north of Burra. Unfortunately it cost the company 50,000 pounds to set up and run. Still the miners got paid, the bullock drivers got paid, the publican made money but the investors took a bath.
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Nice to see that the bullockys got their money at the expense of the shareholders, wouldn’t happen nowadays.