There was some sort of reunion in the big hall at the Park and boy they had loud music until well after midnight and then they all started yahooing for a long time after. I put on the Jon Gabriel mp3, 3 times so we should be skinner now, hee hee.
We were up at 6am to get some sunrise shots, it was rather cool. We whizzed into Silverton and headed straight for the Silverton Hotel to get some pics with just the mad max car but there was a troopy parked next to it and other cars along the side. There is a building next to it that is made out of tin with a windmill so not an original building but gee it came up nice with the early morning light. The hotel looks a treat too, all glowing nicely orange pity about the cars. We headed back up to the Peter Brown gallery where we could see the morning sun lighting up the cars and building with a nice orange glow. Unfortunately there were a lot of shadows, so afternoon light is better on them. We will try again tomorrow morning for the Silverton Hotel.
There are many ruins around Silverton one was in the middle of the local cafe and another building. Oh the local cafe had a sign up saying entry was free, maybe it’s a go at the galleries for charging entry.
The current population of Silverton is 60, at its peak in the mining days it reached 6000 at the end of 1885. As BH larger mines were established Silverton fell into decline. Many of Silverton’s buildings were transported to BH, this is why only a few on the original building survive and why they are so spread out, with buildings plucked from here and there and moved into BH.
This arvo we went to Silverton Cemetery, it was quiet moving see all the old graves where people died so young in the harsh conditions of early times. The cemetery is on 42 acres and it seems as if people were buried according to their religion as there were different groups and well spread out. It appears they are keeping the cemetery of today fenced off from the older cemetery.
We then took a run out to Mundi Mundi lookout where you look over the Mundi Mundi plains; this is where Mad Max 2 was filmed. It’s flat red dirt with only a few toughs of grass. 8km out of town is the Umberumberka Reservoir the water was clearer than we expected and looked very inviting for a dip, with the hot sun beating down on us, but alas no swimming is allowed. This reservoir was built to provide water to BH.
We have had a nice rest this arvo and we also pulled off the vent behind the back of the fridge on the outside of the van so Chris could get access up underneath a shelf that is there to allow air flow for the fridge. We could see where they had used silicone but they had left gaps where the dust had got in, so Chris sealed all that up. We also took the plunge and sealed the back window, we did it in a way that we can unsealed it (we hope) we went get home and sort it all out properly. This is the window we had trouble with water getting in. We have a lot of dirt road ahead from Cooper Pedy along the Oodnadatta track etc. We really didn’t want that dust in the van again.
The reunion people are still here in fact there seems to be more, tonight we will put the Gabriel CD in the player that just keeps on playing, we will be wasted away by morning.
We have had the genie on this arvo charging up batteries, not noisy as all, in fact Chris thinks we should run it all night and let the hum put us to sleep and drown out the noise from the reunion. We put it on last night to cook the veggies in the micro and it was wonderful and quick.
We plan to go back into Silverton for tonight’s sunset. We will hook the van up tonight, ready to head out for a sunrise. The sunset was a bit of a flop.