Day 31 – Batchelor - Wangi Falls

Batchelor was largely developed during WWII and by the Rum Jungle Uranium mine. The town is well signed and has an informative volunteer-run museum in the quarters for the single women working at the mine. 

The quarters were in use in the 1950s and ladies had a fitted wardrobe with cupboards above, a knee hole dressing table with electric light and their own wash basin. Presumably the Rum Jungle Mine owners had to offer good accommodation to entice city girls to a remote place.

The men’s quarters were not so good originally and took some significant action by the union before the mine owners improved conditions.

We guessed from the headlines that the fate of flight MH17 was past news.

Wangi Falls dip pool is lovely to look at and refreshing to bathe in. The campsite has some tight corners for trailers and caravans. It also filled up just after midday. The hopefuls that arrived after dark had to stay in the car park and avoid the wardens in the morning.

With so little light pollution, we were treated to views of the Milky Way and earlier the fruit bats flying over us at dusk.

There are two interesting tin mines and a tourist precinct at the west side of the Litchfield Park. The tourist precinct was a bit overstated.

Life in the tin mines must have been hell. They were remote and economically marginal.

Rustin Engine

The miners did not understand the damage that silica dust would inflict on their lungs and suffered badly towards the end of their shortened lives. The Bamboo Creek mine flooded in the mid-1950s and as it was economically marginal it was abandoned due to the cost of removing the flood water and making it workable again.

The second mine, Mt Tolmer Mine at the Blyth Homestead, had a more varied history. The mine conditions were similar to the Bamboo Creek Mine except there was no machinery to process the ore.

Harry Sargent established a homestead 1928 as an outlier to the main Stapleton Station some 25 miles away. The older boys stayed at the homestead and worked the tin mine. Harry Sargent had 14 children probably driven by the need for family labour the make his station and the tin mine economic. The children had a hard life. All the older children, boys and girls, worked the tin mine.

Harry Sargent taught his children that is was weak and cowardly to seek help in the bush. On one occasion a horse crushed one of the girl’s hands. The arteries were not broken so the boys held her down, straightened her hand and made a splint of paper bark. Two weeks later the girl was driving an ox cart one handed with the other in a sling.

Litchfield Park is also home to the magnetic termite mounds. The term ‘magnetic’ is a bit misleading as the termites build to reduce the impact of the sun’s heat and therefore orientate their mounds north to south. The cathedral mounds are truly enormous.