Fri 2 Aug 2013 – Trephina Gorge to gold mining in Arltunga

Woke up late, had breakfast and then just enjoyed playing guitar and blues harp while Mel played her harp – this was after everyone else had left the camping grounds.

Had lunch then set off for a quick walk up the gorge where a group of artists from Victoria were busy painting the scenery.  They were camping at Ross River Homestead and travelling out to different places each day to paint.

Our next stop was an old gold mining town of Arltunga.  While not much gold was found compared to other finds like Ballarat, it paved the way for the opening up of the Centre of Australia and was in fact the first town in the Centre. 

Rodger nearly looks like those old miners.

Melody would nave make a gook cook - Sienna you would have liked all the old ovens to do pretending baking in.

An old butter churner.

Rodger trying the old crank handle 

More beautiful wildlife

Some of the old houses restored

 Camp oven

On the way up to the Joker mine - a round house - quite unusual.

The Joker mine - quite a walk up the hills to get here - unfortunately it yielded very little, hence the name.

We raced back to Alice Springs to the Heavitree Gap Caravan Park so that we could try and Skype our Lighthouse Friday Night Group friends.  We especially wanted to catch them tonight as they were having a special memorial evening for Josie King, a good friend to all of us who died on the 8th July just after we left.  We were able to get on straight away and it was lovely to talk to everyone and catch up with the the news and share our memories of Josie.