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Published: October 4th 2007
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Map the miner
Dan is tying Map's laces Introduction
Today's walk was a new take on the Peters Hill walk described in George Driscoll's "50 real bush walks around Adelaide". The one that George describes as Walk number 1 in his book took ages when we last went in 2005- this is a modification that takes in a little bit more of the Heysen Trail, and we were able to complete in 3.5 hours. we also visited the town of Kapunda in particular map the minor giant sculpture of a Cornish miner, and the Kapunda mines, where we did a 1.5 km walk.
How to get there...
See the route map - from the GPO head to Gawler and then on to Kapunda. Travel 13 km beyond Kapunda through to Hamilton. After Hamilton we travelled a few more kilometres before turning left on Murray's Road and parking the car on an intersection.
Our last walk here was in 2005 - see
Peter's Hill at Kapunda.
You can find out about other things to do at Kapunda besides walking at this
web site .
What happened ...
First we visited Kapunda and had our photo taken with the giant sculpture of Map the Miner. Apparently the sculpture was covered
Dan and I at Kapunda
Slight encouragement to face the camera required with oil and then set on fire by pranksters and has only recently been repaired. Although the town had made a nice reserve around this sculpture in the re-build, there are no toilets here, you need to go into the town to find them (Hill Street, opposite the museum).
We then headed further North through Hamilton, then turned left onto Murray's Road, then went over a few intersections and parked the car opposite a farm house.
We started our walk by continuing along the road, heading west, until it turned sharply to the left, whereby we crossed the fence and headed up the hill. It was a slow gentle climb to start, and gradually got steeper as we went along the Heysen Trail. When you get to the top you have outstanding views, East and West, of the farming country around this area. You then make your way along the ridge towards the trig point. There is a visitors book stored at the trig point where you can record to all name and the date. I was quite amazed to find that the And learning Connection pen that had left there over two years ago was still in
Desert Rose
At the Map the miner park. The toilets are in town, on Hill street. the box and still working! We continued on to the Belvedere range gate, which we went through, and then veered to the left to cross the fence at the Heysen Trail stile - and start the short spur to Marschall's hut.
The hut was quite rudimentary, but was a welcome lunch spot particularly as it has tables and chairs, rainwater tank and a long drop toilet. It was hard to imagine that a family with eight children once lived there as pioneers. At the bottom of the paddock is a small cemetery which was last used in 1933. The cemetery is full of purple and white flowers - which was lovely as the last time we visited it was circled with freesias.
After lunch we retraced our steps until the start of the spur. At this point we continued down the hill along the road, which then veered to the right. We followed this road and the Heysen Trail markers, down into the creek that leads to a dam, across to the fence line which we followed until we hit a road. It was then a short walk down the road and back to the car.
We
return to Kapunda to check out the Kapunda mine trail - a 1.5 km loop walk that contained the remnants of the copper mining that occurred in the 1840s. The Malachite was still quite prominent in the rocks as well as in the water.
Spotted were some birds of prey - a
Boobook owl, kites and falcons. We also found a small pale blue egg shell that might have been from a robin....
Dan says...
Hello readers
Boy this was a strange walk. It was strange because it was on Monday for once-I couldn't believe it (I would have liked it more if it had been on Monday mornings maths test). Monday was a public holiday in South Australia because it was Labour Day. I was quite reluctant to go because I thought that Dad had to go to work. When we finally got there, I saw good tree to climb but as soon as I started, Dad called me down to start the walk.
The fence art really got my attention. I couldn't believe that that someone would put up such good work into painting corrugated iron and sticking it on a fence.
It was very windy at the top, I thought I would be blown away - wouldn't that be a funny sight? Mum had a big find - her Learning Connection pen from UniSA was still in the box at the top of the hill after 2 years and it still worked!
When we got to the cottage I ran down as I knew we would have lunch there. Mmmm ... sandwiches. Okay, so sandwiches are not that great, but after all the walking we had done, I was so hungry that I would have eaten pig's liver with some fava beans and bean curd.
On the way back to the car Mum and I had a conversation about dimensions and we worked out the world is the same but dimensions are different ways of seeing the world. Like a thermal dimension - imagine you could only see things that were over 100 degrees - what would the world look like to you then?
And now for a riddle...
Q: What has a mouth but can not talk?
A: A river.
Q: Why don't baby birds smile?s
A: Would you smile if your Mum fed you worms all day?
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