Lathams News: DAY 7 - CANIA GORGE.... A HIKE TO SHAMROCK MINE AND LUNCH AT THE DAM...

One of the things I love bout Cania Gorge is the abundance of birdlife out here. They all seem so friendly and particularly the parrots, would actually come up and eat out of your hand. Even the kookaburras would come in close and I had a ball photographing this kookaburra that came in close this morning as we were having out breakfast...

We decided to head off and do one of the easy walks today and decided to do the walk to Shamrock Mine. This walk was a Grade 3 walk, but was only a one and a half kilometre walk. There is a rich gold history associated with this area. Gold was discovered at the Kroombit Diggings in 1870, and gold was soon discovered in Cania and a town grew quickly. The largest nugget weighed nearly 3kg at 96 ounces in 1879.

We were keen to check out the mine and learn more of the history of gold in this area.... After our walk, out plan was to go through to Lake Cania to enjoy the picnic lunch we had packed...

We arrived at the car park a little before 10am. and set off to explore the mine site...

It was a pretty easy walk, although up hill, it was a gradual uphill climb and not many of the many uneven steps we found on many of the other walks we went on in the park.

Wildflowers growing everywhere...

We found plenty of cow paddies on our walk and the blow flies were there in abundance...

There were a few seats and picnic tables along the walk which was great for those that wanted to take a bit of a break. Pity there weren't more of these on some of the other walks within the park...

Shamrock Mine is in Paddy’s Gully, named after ‘Paddy’ who worked the area for gold. Paddy tried to camouflage his diggings claiming his efforts were unrewarded, but word spread and miners flocked to the area and was christened ‘The Shamrock’.

In 1910, Shamrock Mine was the principle mine on the Cania goldfields. During the 1920s the gold mining industry at Cania collapsed, with only sporadic gold mining continuing until the 1940s.

In 1974, a dam on Three Moon Creek was approved, and the old town now lies beneath the water of Cania Dam.

The Shamrock Mine Site has remnants of the gold mining history remaining. Information boards at the entrance of the walk and along the trail provide history and information about Shamrock Mine and the Cania goldfields.

A two-head stamper and other artefacts are located part way up to a mine shaft. The mine shaft has a grate over it so you can see down into it

From our position at the shaft we could glimpse the dam walk of Cania Lake...

After having a good look around the Shamrock Mine Site and reading all the information that was on hand, us girls decided to sit at the mine site itself whilst the boys had a little further explore a bit higher up the hill. Once they came back to us, it was time to head back towards the car for the next part of our adventure this morning...

From here we were headed to the Lake for lunch... On our way to the lake we saw a sign to the Scenic Lookout.. The scenic lookout at Cania Dam is on a high point above the dam across from the Castle Mountain cliffs.

Castle Mountain cliffs

Massive prickly pear bushes...

At the lookout is a brick shelter from which the views to the dam wall and the mountain cliffs can be seen from. Inside there is information about the dam and its construction.

A plaque contains the names of the pioneers of the district that were laid to rest in the Cania Cemetery before the land of the town was claimed to become the dam. Below is a list of names on a plaque and another plaque dedicated to the Childs family and Edward Victor Childs who was the last owner of the land prior to resumption for the Cania Dam.

Outside there is a monument with some of the headstones recovered from the Cania Goldfield Cemetery which now lies at the bottom of the lake. An odd thing with the list in the shelter is that the dates are one day after the date on the headstones, except for Eliza Williams with the date eight days before it.

The monument also has a plaque for Ronald Frederick Carlsen who was accidentally killed 18th September 1981, during the construction of the dam. There are no facilities at the lookout, however, there are great facilities at the recreation area of Cania Dam below the lookout.

Once we had a good look around up at the Lookout and had read all the tomestones we head down to Cania Lake for lunch.

Lake Cania is a man-made lake which was constructed in the early 1980’s. The construction of the lake resulted in the old gold mining township of Cania being submerged.

The water collected in this reservoir is primarily for the use of primary producers and during times of low rainfall water is released from the lake to refill aquifers, allow further irrigation of crops and replenish the town water supply.

An unexpected benefit of the Lake its popularity for year-round fishing and water sports during the warmer months. The lake contains yellow belly, saratoga, bass and perch. Each year the Cania Dam Fishstocking Association conducts a fishing competition attracting anglers far and wide.

The Lake itself was quite low at the moment at only around 33% capacity but it was a pretty spot and there are some picnic facilities down there. There were a few boats out on the lake as it is quite a popular fishing spot.

Steve and Ian had both applies for a fishing permit to fish out of the Lake and they were keen to try their hand at fishing after we had our lunch.

Parked at the lake.

Plenty of picnic facilities down at the Lake..

Our picnic lunch

Whilst John and Barb and Kathy and I headed back to the van, Steve and Ian decided to have a go at fishing on the Lake. The moved around the shoreline but didn't have a lot of success. I think they came to the agreement that you really needed a boat to be able to fish the Lake properly.

Ian did manage to catch at least one Bass fish, but it was undersized and he had to throw it back in..

On our way home, Kathy and I drove around close to the Dam wall to have a good look. Cania Dam is unlike some of the other Dams we have been too in that you are not able to drive across the dam wall here and we could only look from afar...

On our way home, we also decided to stop at the picnic area at the commencement of the walks through the National Park. I wanted to check and see if there were any landmarks I might have been able to identify from our times coming here over 40 years ago when we used to came here as a Youth Group. Unfortunately, nothing was familiar to me..

However, whilst parked here we did notice some pretty impressive big cars. Obviously there was some sort of car rally happening and the owners had all driven out here from Monto for afternoon tea. The cars were impressive enough that Kathy and I were keen to photograph them..

Whilst we were here though we did find the commencement track to most of the other walks within the National Park. We would need to head back here in the next day or so to do some more of the many walks out this way..

We were both a little tired from our walk this morning and also from being out in the sun, so we decided to have a bit of a nanna nap. I was woken around 3.45pm when our son and grandsons rang from Denmark for a chat. As it was nearly bird feeding time, I thought I would walk up with my photo so I could share it with Theo, our almost 3 year old grandson. He loves birds, and especially our colourful Aussie birds.

showing Theo all the Aussie birds

Facetime call with our grandson in Denmark - showing him all the birds

Beautiful Red King Parrot...

Theo loved seeing the birds, and it was a great chance for Pete to tell him all about them. He is a little sponge for knowledge at the moment.

The boys arrived back from the Lake not long after we had come back from feeding the birds and one of the first jobs they did was light the fire and get ready for the evening. Once 4pm comes the cool air seems to just drift in..

We had packed the firepit up this morning in case new vans arrived into the park whilst we were out exploring, however, we did find out this afternoon that no new tourists were booked into the park on tjat site until Friday morning, so that meant that for the rest of the week, we were able to leave the firepit set up on the site directly behind John and Barb and next to Ian and Kathy.