This is where we chose to go to try to see the “Christmas Star”. Saturn and Jupiter were due to make a “Great Conjunction” and we were keen to see if it looked significant in our sky, so we went looking for a place to go to that would have dark skies. We found Meldanda as a posible campsite. https://www.meldanda.com.au/
When we went looking on google to find a dark place we discovered that there is a River Murray Dark Sky Reserve in SA that is not too far away. https://www.assa.org.au/facilities/river-murray-dark-sky-reserve/
We then looked for places in the area and found this little gem, which was donated to the community in the early 90s and is used by the local school and landcare groups.
There are a number of buildings in the property including a locked classroom with kitchen and a rec room (open shed) and toilets and showers, plus a great fire circle. There are also butterfly garden, bush curlew learning area, bat area, fire retardant garden and native bush food trail. They also have a disc golf course. There is evidence of an area where bush for brush fence is growing too – but maybe not too successfully. (Maybe a failed money making project?). The lake and frog pond are dry now but used to be teeming with bird and frog life. (too many dams on the nearby hills?)
The local landcare are the contact and Aimee was very helpful and happy for us to use the place to camp (donation of $5pp).
The local landcare use the site for a seed growing area.
We chose to camp in the “astonomical paddock” towards the back of the property to have some area not filled in by trees to hopefully see the planets at the appropriate time. I had actually thought they would be in the east, so was a bit taken aback when it was discovered (thanks Julia) that we needed to look south west to see them. This is because they were about to drop below the horizon soon after it became dark.
It was a cloudy day early and we didn’t hold out a lot of hope for a viewing , but in the end were a bit lucky to have a cloudless sky. The view itself was not as impressive as we had hoped. The moon was fairly bright, and the light from the planets was not hugely impressive. Never mind.
Having arrived part way through the afternoon, we had a bit of a chance to wander on the property and see what it had to offer.
Bat boxes (for the numerous species of bat that live in the area)
An outdoor classroom “Bush Curlew” sculpture
Disc golf
Dried frog pond and stairs to the dry lake
Beautiful old trees giving homes to many birds
After taking our time to wake and rise the next morning we were well into tourist mode so we mooched in to Cambrai and drove up and down all the streets and out to the sports ground (just to have a look around) .
Then we took the long way home through the impressive Rathjen’s Pass
…and on to the surprise sculpture park where we stopped and had a wander, totally flummoxed by the challenge to use our facebook to enter into an augmented reality experience. We failed at this, but enjoyed trying (sort of) as we looked at the sculptures spread over the hills. Trev went much further than I did – with the shade of the trees and van and the bird sounds and nearby windmill calling for my attention.
We “bummeled” our way home via Lobethal, Lenswood, Basket Range and Uraidla before coming down the top of Greenhill Rd to the east of Cleland CP and home in time to get some tea ready for our visitors.
Christmas Decorations on the way home.
It was a great opportunity to share an evening with the Lloyd Family on (almost) home ground for them and to investigate another SA treasure.
Luvapuzzle 