Manangatang Off The Beaten Path

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Shamefacedly, I must confess that our main ambition was to reach our destination in South Australia. So, although the placard outside the facilities (see to do tip) offered the lure of various adjacent State Forests, Reserves, Lakes, and even the giddy excitement of a gypsum mine, we could not afford the time to deviate from our schedule. I shall probably wonder forever how much water, if any, the ongoing drought has left in the lakes: are they mere salt pans at present, as were many others we saw from the road?

It would indeed be remiss of me to not provide you at least a small glimpse of typical Mallee country wheatlands. The second photo was taken some distance further along towards the South Australian border. The promising sign is that a few recent showers have allowed at least a start to the new wheat crop, seen in the distance. Let's hope that the winter rains arrive to make it more successful than many have been in recent years. This also shows the sandy red soil and the stationary sandhill in the distance. Over the years dust storms, travelling huge distances and originating in the Mallee, have carried away far too much of that sandy soil.