Salt

Today I travelled with the University of the Third Age's Natural Resources group to Kow Swamp and Pyramid Hill in Northern Victoria. Kow Swamp has the oldest evidence of aboriginal occupation dating back 120,000 years. Over time the soil has been extensively degraded by salinity.  The area is part of the Murray Darling Basin.  The terrain is flat, it has a low rainfall and high evaporation rates resulting in increased salt concentration across the landscape. We visited a Salt Interception Scheme involving large numbers of evaporation basins from which the salt is harvested and used for livestock or ultimately value added to become household salt. It was all a bit depressing to see the colour of the soil, the dead trees and the obvious hardship of those farmers who remain.
So I looked for a Blip.  No hope of a flower, but some beauty to be found just the same.  My Blip is of a rusted out bucket of an abandoned front end loader.  All machinery at this plant is purchased second hand because of the inevitable rusting out by contact with the salt. There is a graveyard of such pieces of heavy machinery on the site. So I rummaged around and rather liked the abstract contrast of the dry grasses against the brilliance of the rust in the bucket.