Bald Hills

We went for a an exploratory drive through the hills of the Fleurieu Peninsula  towards Yankalilla to become more familiar with the back country roads in our local region. I  used  the trip in this place  to scope some  future photographic possibilities. Yankalilla is  on the western side of the Peninsula.  It is not often that we venture to the western Fleurieu Peninsula. 

 We started the trip driving along the roads that were familiar with --the ones that Suzanne had walked along when she did the Heysen Trail (Tugwell Rd + Keen Rd).  Then we turned west  along Hancock Rd and  spent a bit of time wandering around,  and exploring,  the ruins of this  Congressional Church at Bald Hills on Hancock Rd. It was our only stop on the trip  to Yankallila.      

After leaving the ruins of the church we  continued  along Hancock Rd,  turned right into  Mayfield Rd, then left into the  Inman Valley Rd, which runs east/west across the Peninsula.  We drove west along the Inman Valley Rd to the outskirts of the Yankalilla township.   We turned  around before entering the Yankalilla township,   drove back along the Inman Valley Rd before  turning into Torrens Vale Rd. We then  drove along  Parawa Rd up  to Range Rd, which is one of the main east west roads across the Peninsula.  

We decided to  walk the poodles along Tunk Head Rd as it was a side road and would  have little traffic.  I made this scoping picture of  roadside vegetation in an agricultural landscape  whilst we were on the   poodlewalk on Tunk Head Rd:

After the poodlewalk  we  drove  east along Range Rd  to Victor Harbor.  We had a   quick drink at the Victor Harbor Golf Club whilst watching dusk settle on the landscape around Rosetta Head. 

The  Fleurieu Peninsula was one of the four major  dairying regions  in South Australia.   On the trip I noticed that the  dairy farms on the  Peninsula are disappearing  after the deregulation of the dairy industry at the beginning of the 21st century.   The reason  is that  the cost of production per litre  of milk is  now higher than the price of the milk--they  receive about 41 cents a litre from the processors, while it costs about 50c/L to produce the milk. Currently, the costs of production keep rising whilst milk prices remain stagnant.  From what I could see as we drove through the Fleurieu Peninsula landscape the farmers  in this region are diversifying into sheep and beef. 

The   black and white pictures of the landscape  make it  bleaker  than it does in colour. The bleakness is what I am looking for.