Being A Tourist

In Wallaroo

I arrived in Wallaroo to care for three cats in a house overlooking the bay and the jetty where bulk grain carriers came in to load. The ferry to Cowell went past once a day (twice on Friday and Monday) and on the horizon to the west I watched the big ships sail to and from the smelters at Whyalla and Port Pirie.

Wallaroo was one of three towns known as the Copper Triangle. Back in the late 1800s/early 1900s this area produced more copper than anywhere else in the world outside of Cornwall. The mines closed 100 years ago, the smelters a few years later, and grain and barley are now the currency of the area. I arrived at the start of the grain harvest, when trucks were just starting to roll into the bulk grain storage pads and pigeons entered a season of plenty.

Armed with the official Wallaroo Tourist Drive map, I pedaled along the foreshore toward town. The good things about living at North Beach (stunning view, perfect position for ship/ferry supervision, sunsets, rock foreshore preventing pesky 4wds from roaring up and down the beach) were offset by the extra 8km I had to pedal to get to town before going anywhere else. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing: the North Beach foreshore had minimal traffic and a stunning view out to the jetty where a bulk carrier was taking on grain.

There were no barriers to riding out on the jetty. I wasn't game though: there were many gaps between the poorly maintained jetty planks, not to mention the random bolts protruding from the wood. And so many fishermen that I was always worried about fish hooks.

Further along North Beach my bicycle worked to advantage, allowing me to zip along the path through the sand dune conservation area while all the cars had to take the long way past the salt lake.

The path popped out at the North Beach Kitchen which in theory could serve me breakfast but in practice wasn't open whenever I rode past.

This would be a nice place to sit with a coffee.

From the Kitchen I was in spitting distance of town but the pesky marina entrance got in the way.

I had to ride a big loop around the marina to get to the town which lay just on the other side of the marina entrance. It was a nice ride though, and a bicycle path allowed me to cut some corners.

The bicycle path spat me out onto the Wallaroo foreshore via the site of the old copper smelting works. I put on my tourist hat and started reading information boards.

Back in the latter half of the 1800s Wallaroo was the smelting town and export port for the copper mines in Kadina and Moonta and as such had a large Welsh population, the Welsh at that time possessing secret copper smelting knowledge known only to them. This gavve the Welsh an advantage until blast furnaces were invented and their secret knowledge became obsolete. The Wallaroo smelter closed in 1923 as world copper prices dropped, and very little remained but what was right on the foreshore with a handy path to cycle along and information boards to tell me what I was looking at.

Beyond the smelter ruins lay Office Beach, so called because it was directly opposite the office where workers waited each week to be paid. Office beach boasted a swimming enclosure where one could swim without fear of becoming an appetiser for great white sharks.

Not that anyone was swimming. While in theory Summer had started, the water still held firmly to the ideals of winter.

No one was allowed to take a 4wd on Office Beach, to facilitate safety of swimmers. Which was a moot point given that the beach was covered in fishing nets laid out in tidy lines and attended by two fishermen and a front end loader with yet more nets in its bucket.

I rode out past the grain elevators to the edge of town. I could just see the remains of the old powder magazine on the next point - an exploration for another day.

The tourist map took me on a long wander through town, made longer by somewhat erratic signage and me getting distracted by free camping spots and rail trail infrastructure. Wallaroo was bursting with old stone buildings both large and small, most of them still in use and a large number being either churches or pubs, where the Welsh presumably repented in one for sins committed in the other.

Back in town I stopped at a coffee shop to rapturous bicycle-related enthusiasm from my waiter. She brought me a map of the Yorke Peninsula and went through the Walk (or Bicycle) The Yorke* in exhaustive detail. The other waiters got involved and everyone reminisced about childhoods spent in the various ramshackle Yorke Peninsula fishing settlements and bombarded me with detailed information which I couldn't remember and would never need to use. No one had actually walked or ridden the Walk The Yorke, but they were all very proud of it anyway and were very keen for me to try it.

"So what is there to see around Wallaroo?" I asked. "What are the local sights?"

There was a thoughtful silence. "You could go to Woolworths at Kadina?" offered the youngest waiter, as she left to pack up the tables. "There's a movie theatre in Kadina too."

There was a bit more silence, the list of things to do in Wallaroo having obviously been exhausted. Everyone started to tidy up and wipe things. "Nice to meet you!" said my waiter. "Enjoy your stay."

I went back to my ride, which was becoming tedious as I had finished the tourist map and was somewhat saturated with old stone buildings. Back around the Marina I went, past the (still closed) North Beach Kitchen, along the foreshore, and home to the cats.

I watched the sun set.

It was a good day.

*Walk The Yorke is a 500km walk/cycle path around the Yorke Peninsula. Cyclists are very much the poor cousins on the WtY, being booted onto the road whenever things get difficult and only getting a passing mention in the trail notes.

Heart

Comment

Link

Today's ride: 29 km (18 miles)
Total: 783 km (486 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	5
Comment on this entry	Comment	0