A Bush Walk

This morning we went on a lovely bush walk in the forest (where we live) with some friends. We explored a dry river bed (due to the lack of rain) and walked for km's. The kids had a ball.

We live in gold mining country so when the river is dry it's the best time to find lumps of quartz that may hold that nugget we are all hoping to find. Along the river bank there is a lot of sedimentry layers or rock and quartz. Some probably from the gold mining days. There are so many gold mines littering the banks of the river. Some of the mines you can still climb into. A little unsafe I am sure but fun to look into with the torch.

You can almost visulise the many chinese and aussie miners. Tents on the hillside. Such a hard life. How they coped with the extremes of the weather.

We are in the middle of what is called a green drought. A few rain showers green everything up once in a while but overall our waterways and catchments are dry or low. The river is so dry with only the odd pool of water where it is deep. We managed to find a spiny freshwater crayfish hiding under a rock in one of the shallow pools.

I love living where we live. The kids are loving the history of where we live. I recently found on the web the aboriginal clans that lived in our area. They were the Kutung, the Wathourung, the Wurunjeri, the Jaara and the Ngurelban. We have very hot summers and very cold (often snows) winters. It amazes me that people lived and survived through summer and winter here. Today we found a large rock on the river bed that had a large symetrical hole that had been worn away into it. Some tool had been ground into the hole for years to form this shape. It really makes you think of who were there before you.