I had a home day today as I had a Zoom session with my Cryptic Crossword group. However I did visit the Stansbury water tower to check progress.
I had an interesting talk to one of the two artists, they work off paintings they have made and loaded onto their mobile phones. He showed me a painting of the green seaweed on his phone that is under the crab and he was going to add a yellowy colour to the seaweed to highlight parts and make it lighter. The painting on his phone was just of the seaweed, there is a separate one of the crab. So it is all freehand artwork using their eyes to transfer a phone image onto the water tower. These two artists had just finished the Edithburgh water tower, which had excellent detail, the Stansbury one is going to be more simple. They were using airless spray guns for this more detailed work, spray guns that have an inbuilt small piston pump to spray the paint out in a fine mist.
Next day I was off the Yorketown for supplies and to check out the water tower there, it was good but not to my taste.
While in Yorketown I learned of a water tank with artwork on the road to Port Moorowie, only a few Ks south east of Yorketown. The water tank was not in use and it was literally in the middle of nowhere on Boothill Station Road.
However the artwork on the tank was very good with a horse team facing the road I drove down.
A little further round the tank were two emus, I love emus and the wild look they get in their eyes, and these two were perfect.
Facing the intersecting road was a painting of men harvesting salt from a dry salt lake. Salt harvesting was quite an industry in this area in the last two centuries. In this century the salt lakes have become a tourist attraction, not sure why, and there are signs on every corner pointing to the different lakes, and there are many. Some do get a beautiful pink colour, but not my idea of a touring highlight.
This tank was on private property so I had to negotiate getting over a barbed wire fence twice to get the photos, which I did with great care and not much dexterity, gingerly would be the word. On the way home I called in at Port Vincent and had a meal of the most excellent fish and chips from the Kiosk in Port Vincent. Garfish, chips salad and potato cakes that they battered and cooked to order, delicious, and eaten at a table on the foreshore. If you are down this way make sure to call in and have some. On the way back I checked progress on the Stansbury water tower and there was the start of a pelican on the back of the tower.
On day 5 a jetty and pine tree had appeared on the tower.
It’s now Saturday and I head off to Innes National park which is right at the bottom of the Yorke Peninsula about 100 Km away. Marg and I camped here many years ago when it was undeveloped and the only campground was a barren footy ground sized area with not trees. All that has changed, the park has a number of campgrounds all good and the one we had stayed at, Pondalowie, now has trees and bushes with campsites in between and the sites are suitable for caravans. I will stay there next visit. A bitumen road takes you through the park to a number of viewing points over seascapes and to an old gypsum mining town. I took my portable BBQ and set it up and cooked a couple of sausages from the local butcher for lunch, a very peaceful spot in a campground.
I visited the Cape Spencer Lighthouse which guards a reef where a ship the Ethel came to grief, you can see a few spars of the Ethel on the beach. The first ship to see the Ethel in distress was the Ferret which alerted authorities, and then 16 years later it was wrecked on the same reef.
Innes National park takes its name from Inneston a town set up by a gypsum mining company that operated from 1914 to 1930. We all will remember Bellco chalk at school when we were kids and the boxes that contained the precious stuff. This chalk was made at Innestown for many years. It was named after a Mr Bell a director of the gypsum mining company, this photo is of the buildings where the chalk was made.
Some of the buildings at inneston have been restored and can be hired for accommodation, this photo shows a couple of ruined buildings and a restored building.
From West Cape there are wonderful views over the park and up and down the coast.
I enjoyed my visit to Innes national park and would come back and stay here. On the way home I checked the Stansbury water tower and we now have dolphins on the tank part of the tower.
Just nearby I was able to buy a dozen oysters so I had half of them mornay (read grated cheese) for tea, they were yummy, so fresh and tasted of the sea.
Tomorrow will be the last day here, sadly, I have enjoyed my stay at Stansbury, it has been very relaxing. I debated staying on a couple of days but decided against it so my next blog may be a few days away.