Self-guided Drive - Stop 6 - SA

Old Threshing Floor and Tadpole Cove Take a short walk from the car park to the Old Threshing Floor. It is thought the ‘floor’ was built in the late 1800s by John Murray and his family. The floor consists of a circular, stone pavement ringed by a retaining wall of limestone, placed on edge to hold the grain in as it was threshed. Wheat and malting barley were the main crops grown around D'Estrees Bay. Imagine harvesting the grain with a hand sickle and then laying it along the circular stone floor. To separate (threshed) the grain head from the stalks, horses walked over the cut stalks on the floor. A hand-turned machine was then used to separate the grain from the chaff before it was bagged and carted to either Kingscote or American River for shipment. This threshing floor continued to be used until about 1930.Tadpole Cove Follow the marked trail from the threshing floor to the small, isolated cove below. Can you see the tadpole, which gives this cove its name, looking out to sea in the centre of the cove? It sits on the orange lichen-covered bedrock and is perpendicular to the beach. The tadpole is formed of beach cobbles cemented together with limestone to form a hard, erosion-resistant barrier. Look at the tadpole's head: the result of thousands of years of relentless weathering. Look for the cottage ruins along the trail.