Salt Lakes

I had wondered about including a trip to the next town North (Elliston) in our itinerary.  But it was quite a way and we have enough other driving to do on this trip.  Frances suggested there were a lot of interesting looking Lakes in that area so we could cast an eye into them.  That seemed like a good idea and after checking Google Earth found a couple of potentially interesting coastal sites on the way, so included them as well.

First up was checking the birds on the water followed by a a short walk along the road.

This image is included to show the differences between Pied and Little Pied Cormorants.  It's at fair range on a pretty dull morning but difference and body shape is size is very obvious.

The first flowering Acacia (A. gillii).

On the main outing our first stop was at Frenchman , a rocky area adjacent to Mount Frenchman.  These spots are a reference to the French whalers who used the mountain (at 168m high, really only a hill) as a look out.  Rock Parrots were there, living up to their name.

Here is the view North ...

.. and South.

There are many ruined cottages around this area.  The juxtaposition of a real ruin and another cottage that looks to heading in that direction was intriguing.  (As we drove past another complete ruin appeared on the far side of the better one.)

Coles Point is named after the family that farmed most of the surrounding area.  The rocks held the biggest flock of Crested Terns I've yet seen on the trip.

This is Mount Greenly, a real mountain at 308m AMSL.  It was named by Flinders after the fiancee of Sir Isaac Coffin who helped with Flinders expedition.

The rocks at Coles Point were the first that showed signs of folding.

The Correas (C. pulchella) were very common.

Once we got back to the highway we got to the first Lake which got within 80m of the road.  That is proved by this snap of the car from the shore.

Looking the other way, here is the 'Lake':

It is more of a salt pan.  I didn't test the surface as I have in the past found that if one goes through the crust the mud underneath is:

• deep;
• black; and
• very smelly.

The only birds seen  here were a group of Shelduck vaguely visible through the heat haze.  (Although only 18^oC there was obviously a whole lotta convection going on.)

We proceeded North to this area we'd noticed on Google Earth, and dived inland along the route marked in red.

Here is one of the Lakes.

They were not all as dry as this but all equally well devoid of waterbirds.  This intrigues me as to why there were no ducks or waders.  It shouldn't be the salinity of the water as waders are quite happy in the ponds at the salt fields North of Adelaide and indeed the major salt lakes in the deserts of North of Port Augusta.  Perhaps it is something to do with fertiliser run off from the surrounding farmland?

We did see some interesting birds around beside the road including 3 Wedgetailed Eagles, 6+ Dusky Woodswallows and a very vocal flock of 12 Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters.  Finally on the outskirts of Kappinie we found a small pond with 7 Pied Stilt and two Red-kneed Dotterels,

On getting back to the Highway we went a little further North to Mount Hope.  My particular hope was that is would have a bakery.  Nope.  About 4 houses and a Memorial Hall (or two).

 One of the houses had a new looking car parked outside and my guess was the car was worth about the same as the house!

We took a further side trip to the cemetery.  It was a bit surprising that it was 1.5km away from the hamlet,  We couldn't work out why this was so: perhaps Eyre Peninsula corpses are particularly prone to zombieism?  I'd expected it to have a lot of old graves and very few new ones.  I was therefore surprised to find that most of the headstones were quite new - nearly all from the 1980s onwards.

It was also surprising, in view of the (apparently marginal) nature of the country to speculate on the likely cost of some of the headstones,  The local undertaker is clearly on a nice little earner.

The paddock behind the cemetery showed that despite the apparent lack of rain whatever had been planted was growing well.

It was then simply a matter of toddling down the highway back to the house.  As we got nearer to Mount Dutton I noticed that the vegetation had changed with a lot of quite large eucalypts rather than the very low shrubs of the coastal areas.  Perhaps the country isn't as marginal as I'd thought.

To get a handle on that I looked at the BoM rainfall stats for Mount Hope.  Astonishingly they appear to have a continuous series since 1903!  That shows there are to have a pronounced Mediterranean rainfall pattern with most of the 405mm average falling between May and September.  2018 to the end of April seems to be about on the median and they score over an inch (27mm) on May 3rd and are well on their way to median May rainfall.

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