Monday, August 23, 2010

Roonka on the River Murray



Yesterday we were part of a Waterhouse expedition to the Roonka Conservation park (near Blanchetown) which was the area an archaeological dig was held by the South Australian Museum on the 1960's through to I think the early '80s.
Remains had been found on a sand hill on what was Roonka Station and an excavation team was sent out.
Now I am only writing about what I think I gleaned from talking to people yesterday and I am no authority but here are my own thoughts.
There is a lot of interesting stuff held in the Museum but it has now largely gone back to a very denuded once upon a time irrigation site. I believe some of the remains are now thought to go back about 20,000 years.
Some of my photos of yesterday and more will probably come this week.
The sign of the park shows that no money and very little thought has gone into the site for a long time but there is hope that that may change and the local elders may take some interest as we had one of the local men with us. I dont think these local aboriginals are related in any way to these finds at this burial ground as according to what I can gather, these were a much earlier people, we have had several waves of people coming in and populating Australia and work is now finding out all sorts of things that were not known even 30 years or so ago.
A 3 hour drive to get there, and the second photo is of the sign on the ferry as we crossed the river at Swan Reach.
There were a lot of wombat burrow around the site and I think this was a wombat skull, certainly not human. But in the next photo there were some human bones exposed on top of the eroding sandhill, these have been listed by the museum people.
The final photo is of the river area with the cliffs of the far bank behind, the billabong in front and the river further behind.
A beautiful site on a lovely day with the sun out but very cold in winter and terribly hot in the summer. I will try to get some of my other photos up tomorrow.
Another long 3 hour drive home so we are taking things a bit slowly today.


1 comment:

Julie said...

Looks like a beautiful area...but creepy to see human bones there...!