Silver mine at Scott Creek

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At Dan's request, we explored the Silver mine in the Scott Creek Conservation Park today. This is a great walk/adventure for people with young children (say about 5-10 years old). Remember to bring a torch for the tunnel walk!!!

How to get there..

From the city we took Unley Road, Belair Road, past Windy Point, Main Road, through to Coramandel Valley, then Cherry Gardens Road and Dorset Vale Road, which traverses the Park. In the bottom of a gully is where the car park is.

The mine is called the Almanda mine, which after failed copper and ore mining in 1850, a successful silver strike was made in 1868, causing a flurry of activity for a couple of years, resulting in 310kg of silver.

There are 2 parts to this section of the Conservation park. The first part looks at some shafts and an old chimney. Then you cross the road and do the Eys tunnel and creek walk. We added in a hill climb on each side, and had a picnic lunch in the middle to take up about 2.5 hours, but you could do the marked trail in an hour or so.

What happenned

We had a glorious day and the spring flowers and orchids were magnificent. A thunder storm was brewing which made for an interesting sky and the occasional roar of thunder. Animals spotted included koalas, snakes, bearded dragons, sleepy lizards, skinks and something with shiny red eyes at the end of the Eys tunnel. At our picnic we saw flame breasted robins and superb blue wrens.

We stopped at Windy point on the way back as the visibilty was pretty good.

Dan says ...

Boy it is dark in here! Too bad Dad got my torch! I let Mum use one of my torches - it could transform into a morse code lamp. It even came with a chart for understanding morse code.
We didn't find any silver, but at least we found some neat animals - we saw a huge spider, a snake (I didn't see that one) a sleepy lizard and a bearded dragon. Did you know that if you see a bearded dragon on a pole it means that its going to rain (it is looking for shelter). They make themselves very tall and push their head high away from their bodies Image.

This week's joke:
Q. What did the hotel manager say to the elephant?

A. Sorry, I thought that was your trunk.

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Photos

Dan at Scott Creek
Equipped with a torch, Dan was ready to explore the silver mine.

Mine buildings
The walk has plenty of signs to describe the history of the silver mine

Chimney
Peter giving Dan a lesson in mining. Did you know it was the Cornish who built circlular chimneys and the Welsh who built square?

Sleepy lizard
These lizards are on the move at this time of year. We also saw bearded Dragons, skinks and snakes today.

Eys tunnel
The Eys workings includes a trip into a tunnel.

A long dark tunnel
It was muddy and dark - don't go in without a torch

The end
When we shone our torch to the end there was a pair of shiny eyes staring back at us - probably an enormous spider ...

Tree roots
The Eys workings included an open cut section - Dan was impressed with these tree roots.

From Eys to the car park
The walk back to the car park went along the creek. Plenty of wildflowers and orchids lined the path - a glorious day!

Cherry Gardens
This Google Earth map shows Adelaide and Cherry Gardens. The Scott Creek Conservation Park park is to the east of Cherry Gardens.