7/12/23 The Salt Lakes

Salt lakes proliferated in the ankle of the Yorke Peninsula.  There were pink salt lakes, grey salt lakes, dry salt lakes, and wet(ish) salt lakes.  There were big ones and small ones and in-between ones, most of them plonked in the wheat paddocks with no-one taking any particular notice of them since the salt refinery in Edithburg closed down in the 1950s.  With Roger still laid flat by his painful back, I took a break from seaside riding and went to explore the salt lakes instead.  

 

The Yorketown Tourist Information Cente kindly provided a pamphlet detailing the roads around the salt lakes, and then I took liberties with the routing to accommodate such things as the wind and wanting to be back in Yorketown before the bakery closed at 3pm.  Back when we drove through Yorketown on the way to Point Turton, Roger was quite taken with the bakery/camping store but sadly he couldn't come to try it due to his back problems.  No problem, I was willing to sacrifice myself in the interests of bakery trials, and to provide him with a detailed product analysis should he so desire it (and even if he didn't).  But first I had to ride my loop around the salt lakes.

I stopped for a minute on the edge of town to watch wheat stubble being collected into neat rows for hay making.

 

And then I started looking at salt lakes. And there were so many! I'll stop talking and just show you the pictures, and there are a lot of pictures.  Feel free to skip the rest if you don't like pictures.

There were directions.  I like directions even if I don't intend to follow them.

The first lake was pink and it's called Pink Lake.  This was the lake we saw on the way to Point Turton, and was the closest lake to the St Vincent highway therefore had the most tourist traffic and a heavily corrugated access road.  The tourists didn't bother to go any further than this, so the road was much smoother to the other lakes.

There were plenty of ruins to keep me interested when I wasn't looking at lakes.

What you can't see is the salt crystals sparkling when the sun poked through the clouds, and the colours changing with the ever-changing light.

Further around, where the tourists couldn't bother to go, I could get down the the edge of the salt.  I could have walked out onto it but I didn't, because it looked rather boggy and I didn't want to get all covered in salt mud.  That would not have been a good look for a bakery visit.

 

 

 

I passed the painted water tank, which I found out later is meant to depict the history of salt mining in the area. It was a nice water tank, but I thought the lakes were much more interesting.

When not looking at lakes there were old windmills and the remains of stone fences to keep me photographically entertained.

The rock said "Boot Hill Station" with assorted graffiti.  I was on Boot Hill Station Road.  I guess that means that Boot Hill Station was/is big around here.

Just up the road from the Boot Hill Station rock was Lake Fowler, which was the biggest lake of the 200 or so on the southern Yorke Peninsula, and which was used for salt harvesting from 1891 through to the 1950s.  I couldn't find the energy to ride all the way around Lake Fowler,  which would have added 10km to my ride. I just went to look at the closest bits.

Site  of the 100 Melville (Lake Fowler) school, which operated from 1896 until 1912.

More of Lake Fowler.  The agaves usually appear where there has been a homestead or similar, where they have been planted as part of someone's long-ago garden.

I liked the red against the white salt.

Munkowurlie Lagoon.

As the road crested each hill a salt lake would come into view: sometimes blindingly white or pink, sometimes covered with vegetation, sometimes just a depression which was working hard on becoming a proper salt lake.

Sheep and samphire on the salt lake.  At least I think it's samphire, I've found it tricky to identify this bright red ground cover that grows in and around many of the salt lakes.

By the time my loop reached the highway the bakery was calling me, so I left Lake Sunday for another day and headed back to Yorketown on the bitumen.  Actually, I headed back to Yorketown on the rough gravel edges of the bitumen, leaving the road to the trucks which roared past with frightening regularity.  I thought of taking a picture of the trucks, but it was just too scary to stop so I pedaled my tired little legs off all the way back to the bakery. 

Along the way I passed a collection of skins hanging out to dry on a fence,

and the last salt lake of my day, just beside the highway on the edge of Yorketown.

I made it to the bakery with half an hour to spare, and made the most of it.

I made sure to send photos to Roger,  so that he could fully appreciate the sacrifices I make for him.

I didn't want him to miss out altogether, so I bought bakery pies for dinner.  It was a bit of a lottery: four 'seconds' pies in a bag with an element of mystery as to what flavour they were but hey, sometimes it's fun to live dangerously.*

Back at home Roger was feeling optimistic and walking much straighter than he had for the past week or two.  We ate our bakery pies and were treated to a fiery sunset over the roofs of the houses behind us.

 It was a fitting end to a great day.

*One pumpkin pie and three curry, in case you were wondering.