Moff's History Tour 1

Today we started our first history tour with Moff. The tour started just outside Wambana. We were in the bus and Moff pointed out a tree. This tree looked just like a pine tree. Though it had big branches and smaller as the branches went higher. The tree was perfectly balanced and shaped so the sun could hit every branch from any angle. The tree was called a Nothfolk Pine. The Northfolk Pine has been around since before the dinosaurs. After an explanation we continued off and took a quick detour to the Point Turton caravan park. Here we found out that The caravan park used to be a lime stone mine. that's why the Northfolk Pine's were here, because they have ships that comes here and if the masks break, the trunk of the northfolk pine is perfect to repair them. On the way to Innes National Park, we stopped at a small house. Here we were told that South Australian emigrants though they were kings when they immigrated here because they could have one home to themselves. They thought they were kings because in that time in Europe, 3 families used to take turns sleeping in one dirty bed. This was a 24 hour cycle. The materials people used to build their houses were limestone. This is because it was being mined from Point Turton at that time.
A big problem about South Australian settlers were that there were problems with the aboriginals. When Settlers had sheep in their paddocks, they blamed the aboriginals for their shep dying and therefore, wiped them out within 3 years. The problem wasn't the aboriginals though, it was the grass. The grass had a chemical in it which killed sheep. Know adays, another chemical is sprayed into the grass to allow sheep to eat the grass without dying. All this was told to us by Moff
Water holes were used by the aboriginals so they could have a water source. When the white settlers arrived, they claimed land which had these water holes. So to get the water the aboriginals would have to tresspass into the land and therefore, if get caught, get shot. One time on a cycle tour, Moff accidentally found some of the holes. He showed them to us. They were about 3m deep. Most of them were very skinny but some of them little kids can fit through. Snakes go to these waterholes because small animals like mice will want to drink out of them. On the way to the water holes we saw a human bone from an aboriginal. Mof alo said thee are a few aboriginal skeletons around the place.
There used to be a busy town at Innes National Park. There a bits of what used to be a railway everywhere around the National Park and there are still old abanded homes everywhere. When we stopped at Innes National Park, we looked at lots of homes. They were really old and were made out of rock. Some of them didn't even have gutters on the roof. A lot of these homes were made for really small people because the roof and windows were really low. The homes were really interesting. Some were run down. We saw an old chalk factory and some gears used to make it. There was also a really old and run down school. Dale used to go to this school because there is a picture of him with some other students on this information sign.
At Innes Naional park we also saw two ship wrecks. One of them was a big ship and the other one was a tug boat. The ship was called the Ethel and the tug boat was called the Ferret. It was pretty amazing. You could see why these ships sunk because the water was extremely rough. It was very windy on the sand when we were looking at the Ethel. There were only bits of it sticking out of the water. Though there was enough of it to see the layout of the ship. The only bit of the Ferret we could see was a big boiler. The rest of the Ferret was under water. The boiler was big, round and rusty. We could stand on it. Moff said the Ferret was pirated and went to places around Indonesia and China. Though one time an Englishman saw this ship, reported it to the police, and the pirates were arrested and was brought back to the area of Innes National Park where it sunk in a shipwreck not long after the Ethel.