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.