Musings on nineteenth century diggers doing it tough in a landscape that brooded with what Fred Dagg once termed the stark hostility of the very land itself gave way to thoughts of an ancient landscape, brooding with, not quite malevolence, more a sense of indifference. It's the same feeling I had crossing the Nullarbor, a feeling that the landscape knows you're there but has no concern whatsoever about another minor interruption. It was there long before you arrived and will be there millennia after you're gone.
Those feelings reached their peak when we stopped at Bob’s Lookout as the Mulligan weaved it's way around the end of the Desailly Range and after that the musings turned to the geology of the goldfields. There must have been reefs of gold in the ancient landscape (the original one millions of years back). Miners on the Palmer turned their attention to reefs once the alluvial started to run out, and I guessed those reefs were old, deep seated remnants of long gone veins of quartz-laden ore. More...
