Heading out our first stop is Penong for John's next tee off...
Penong is a very small settlement located on the Western edge of South Australia's grain growing belt. The town itself is an easy 75 kilometres drive from Ceduna. Scattered around Penong are dozens of windmills that pump water from the Anjutabie Water Basin. This water is supplemented by the use of rain water and water is also carted by truck from a water supply connected to the Todd River pipeline 15 kilometres east of Penong. South of Penong are massive deposits of salt and gypsum in Lake McDonnell. Each year 100,000 tonnes of salt are harvested from brine pools and exported from Port Thevenard which I mentioned in my previous blog.. Lake McDonnell's gypsum deposits are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and cover an area of 87 square kilometres to an average depth of 4.8 metres. That's a lot of gypsum.
Once arriving at Penoug we had to drive around the back of the garage to find the tee off...and once again .. All dirt lol... This was a par 4 ..... and again John struggled with the wind...this time the green was imitation grass.
Even have to play at the side of dead birds..
Another 50 klm down the road was the next tee off..at Nundroo.
This area was discovered in the 1860's by sheep graziers.
The Numdroo area was settled in the 1860's by pioneering sheep graziers. By the 1870's Nundroo station itself had been incorporated into the much larger Yalata and Fowler's Bay Sheep Runs which ran for several hundred kms in an East West direction along the Far West South Australian Coastline.
In those days Aboriginal Shepherd's were frequantly employed to tend the sheep stock. By the 1880's these vast sheep runs were broken up as the original pastoral land leases expired. The area was then opened up to more intensive farming practices including some wheat farming... today the area still continues with it's tradition of sheep grazing and grain growing.
Nundroo has the largest population of Southern Hairy Nosed Wombats in Australia. Their isolation has shielded them from many diseases threatening the species in many other parts of Australia.
Regular surveys are done around Nundroo and it is estimated over 2.5 million wombats inhabit this area.
Even though these wombats pose a threat to farmland and are regularly hunted by the indigenous population, their numbers appear to not be threatened.
The Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat has also been very important to protecting the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat, whose numbers are endangered: only 100 or so still live in the wild today. The Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat has been used as a surrogate mother to help repopulate this species.
We had to walk half klm to the tee off and then walk back so we are getting plenty of excersice...
Had to use top of coke bottle has sometime the tee has no where to stick in to
No comments:
Post a Comment