Detour off the O.T. to The Peake Ruins Oct 8, Day 27

15Km off the Oodnadatta track we had seen there were some ruins of a tiny village that had an overland telegraph repeater station at it from 1871 - 1879. It suggested it was a very 4 wheel drive track, so we decided to uncouple the caravan, and leave it near the track, and go to see this old place.

It took us about 40 minutes to travel the 15 Km, it was so bumpy and windy, but we were rewarded with a few stone houses, some in quite good repair, in the middle of nothing. I can only imagine what it would be like to have been living out there in the 1870’s, what a place to try to carve out a living for yourself. It puts our moans about going to work everyday in cosy offices, or with good shoes on our feet and hot food in our stomachs, to shame.

The buildings include the large telegraph repeater station, the kitchen building, a house/dwelling originally built for the Peake [cattle] Station in 1860s, a forge, a shop, and a few other buildings. There was also a copper mine and an artesian spring – from which I guess they all survived. The forge had loads of old machinery and bits of ancient broken bottles piled in it, and other building even had the old cast iron beds propped up in them – it reminded me of ours back home. These houses were a bit tidier than ours though – as you can see from the pictures!

Sitting on the rubble in one of the houses was a hawk that did not move an inch when Darren found it. This was only a baby. And was a much bigger baby than the tiny things we saw in the nest a few days before. In my opinion it was not to be messed with. If that was the baby – how big were the parents? And, WHERE were they?
I backed off (a long way off), Darren took pictures as close as he could, while it solemly surveyed him. I was a bit worried that it was not flying away because it was underfed, had lost it’s parents, and was exhausted (I was pretty hungry and tired myself). Darren said it’s parents would not be far away – hence my retreat – and sure enough, much to my relief, later as we were leaving in the car we saw one of them coming in overhead.