We crossed the Wrexford river and headed south. Yesterday was a snake day, today it was wallabies and eagles. At one stage Peter pulled over next to the road to show us a kapok tree. The more mature readers will remember those horrid kapok mattresses we used to have, usually all lumps and bumps, and so hard to make the bed look neat. The kapok itself is found inside the seed pod, and it would take a lot of pods to make a mattress. thank goodness for inner springs!
The main reason for the existence of Weipa, which is located on the Gulf of Carpentaria, on the western side of the peninsula, is bauxite, used in the manufacture of aluminium. The mining is open cut, but quite unlike the open cut coal mines in the Hunter Valley. Here the land is flat, the bauxite is found between one and four metres under, and they simply remove the top metre and put it aside, remove the next three metres, and replace the top metre, although now three metres lower than it used to be. It is replanted with vegetation similar to that which was removed, and the rehabilitation looks not too bad considering- at least it's more natural than the Hunter Valley rehab jobs. The bauxite itself (which looks like reddish brown ball bearings) is washed and screened several times before being shipped by train to the shipping terminal and sent either to Gladstone or Newcastle for refining, or overseas.
We stayed in a very nice motel and enjoyed very nice outdoor meals, went for a bus tour of the mine, and although some people have actually been taken by crocodiles in the recent past, we still didn't see one.
One of the highlights was seeing azure-winged kookaburras in a nearby nest. The blue is amazingly bright but they don't laugh, they cackle.
No comments:
Post a Comment