Looking through time's window

Hiking is one of my things, I love it, as it gets me closer to nature, is great exercise and allows me to think more clearly. I also love history and have a desire to delve into it, learn about what happened long ago and about the people who came before me. The cool thing about both of those things is that they sometimes come together and that's what happened last Saturday when I went hiking at Anstey Hill Recreation Park.

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The park contains many walking and mountain-bike trails and is home to animals like koalas, kangaroos, kookaburras, reptiles and birds plus there's a lot of native flora, some that has become quite rare throughout the Adelaide hills. The paths and tracks are generally well-maintained by National Parks and Wildlife Service personnel and whilst the park is quite large, some 360 hectares, getting lost is unlikely unless one strays from the designated tracks. It can be tough-going though, steep and strenuous, with track-names that leave nothing to the imagination, the foreboding, Torture Hill Track, for instance.

Summer just ended so the park is dry. Each season it has appeal although summer is probably the least inviting to me. In the other seasons it's green, is full of wild flowers and the creeks run freely; it's pretty special.

My hike on Saturday was tough because I pushed hard for slightly over four hours up and down steep inclines and the temperature was warm, some 30°C, and very sunny as you can see from the images. It was enjoyable though, even despite me being a little footsore later on.

I saw a couple of kangaroos, one koala far up in a tree snoozing and countless birds and reptiles. I also saw the tail-end of a snake but I don't know what type as it was hurrying away from me, thankfully. Me no likey deadly snakey.

One of the cool features of the park is that it once held a plant nursery established around 1856 by a man called Carl Neumann who had arrived in Australia just prior to 1849, from Germany. He built up an extensive business with the nursery once covering over 180 hectares; that's over half the current park we know today (That's a huge nursery.)

_{Some of the flowers left behind by the nursery and which grow to this day - A legacy from long ago. It's quite a juxtaposition to see them amongst the ruins of the nursery itself.}

It had glasshouses, ferneries, hothouses heated by furnace-heated hot water pipes, market gardens, walled gardens, rose gardens and orchards, bulb-beds, stables, harness room and buggy shed, barns, potting-houses, a pigsty, dairy and of course, housing for the family and employees along with other supporting buildings like shower and toilet blocks and so on. It was an extensive operation and all developed by a man who had only a basic knowledge of horticulture.

In the early years of Adelaide as a colony fresh fruit and vegetables were rare; most was imported from England bottled. I think Neumann saw a market for fresh produce and I imagine his orchards containing 300 different kinds of fruit trees changed things for the better quite quickly. He had some 500,000 apple, cherry and plum trees planted, 100,000 orange and lemon trees and around 100,000 vines; that's a lot of produce for what would have been a very small population at the time - In 1878 the entire (massive) State of South Australia only had a population of 250,000 people.

Further to the fresh produce, the nursery had 300 types of orchids and 600 varieties of roses, bulbs, ferns and palms, ornamental trees and shrubs and other flowers also. The family ran a landscaping service and a shop in Adelaide too...not bad for a German immigrant who had only been in the country for twenty or so years. In that short time he had built up the largest nursery in the southern hemisphere!

_{This is what part of the main area of the nursery looks like now, but once it was a hive of activity and a very productive business run by Carl Neumann and his wife.}

_{Sorry, this is a terrible photo, but it shows the layout of the hub of the nursery as it was in the late 1800's.}

Unfortunately, like all things, it met its demise eventually; human things tend to have a habit of doing that.

There was a terrible flood in 1912 that almost wiped it out completely and it never recovered from there. In subsequent years it was used as a dairy until in 1935 it was stripped of it's usable items and left abandoned until it was totally destroyed in the devastating Ash Wednesday fires of 1983. Now all that is left is a few standing walls, piles of rocks and the scattered plants that pop up in season.

_{Above is part of what's left of the pigsty in the back corner. The same building also held the wash house and buggy shed. A strange combination of uses.}

Interestingly, a few members of the family established a new nursery only a couple kilometres away which still operates to this day; I go there a lot to buy my plants, seeds and for expert gardening advice. That's kind of cool right? It's great to see the family, the descendants of the original chap, still operating the nursery, albeit in a much smaller way.

_{A few of the crumbling walls that once made up part of the nursery buildings. The steps at top right once led onto the front porch of the family's house and top left and lower right are parts of the house walls. Lower left is what's left of a large shade house once containing camellias.}

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Another legacy of Carl Neumann's is the flowers that spring up in-season around the park. It's quite lovely to hike Anstey Hill in mid-winter to early spring when the jonquils carpet the ground and from late winter daffodils add their blooms. They're not the only flowers, ferns, palms and trees left behind by the nursery either. It's quite wondrous.

It's lush in winter and spring and whilst in the summer months the creeks mostly dry up one was still running when I was there on the weekend, fed by an underground spring. It made for a really nice hike, although winter and spring time is my favourite time to be there.

_{Here's few random shots around the park. Top left is one of the hills I climbed, next is a little butterfly that kept me company, a sign warning hikers of a bike trail and some fellow I passed walking his dog.}

I wandered around the ruins on Saturday, grabbed some photos for this post and sat about soaking up the mood of the place. It was peaceful, although not silent as birds and bees called and buzzed, kangaroos hopped just out of sight in the scrub and I could hear the skittering of reptiles in the dry leaves and grasses. Add the light breeze moving through the trees and it made for quite wondrous music to accompany my contemplation.

I tried to imagine what the place must have been like in its heyday but struggled; looking through the window of time isn't always clear vision, however I enjoyed my moments before gathering myself and heading back down the gully.

It was a good hike and, whilst I was tired from ascending and descending all those steep hills, I enjoyed the time thoroughly. Combining the historical factor with my hike made for a great day and its one I'll experience again in other seasons as the area changes. I look forward to that.