Day 111

Day 111 Woomera

We upped camp and headed our expedition south towards Woomera. Once again the drive was

Opal miners at work

lake Hart

uninspiring. We said our farewells to members of other expeditions. Glenda and Barb are off to explore the off road and interior, but expect to have them drop home in sometime next year. Ian and Kath we may see later at Woomera or if not in January, turns out they have booked into the holy mile in Busselton the same time we will be there, how’s that for coincidence? The View is very flat although it was broken

Black Arrow

Sea Slug

a couple of times by mine developments. According to the local baker, there were mineral mines opening up out there and these were obviously were two of them. They had developed underpasses under the highway, similar, but smaller than those we had seen in WA. We also saw more wildlife, most of it dead in the way of big red kangaroos. But there were those that were alive in the form of a huge Wedgetail eagle who was just standing by the road and a Large Bearded Dragon on the road playing stick.

Me and my Meteor

Maureen hanging off her rocket

The drive was also an experiment. Glenda and Barb had told us last night that if we dropped down to 4^th gear instead of going up to 5^th (overdrive) we would save fuel. I must admit that I was sceptical as we would be driving at 2300 revs instead of 1800 revs but it was certainly a smoother ride without the struggle then drop in a gear going up rises and I am sure we got more out of our gas tank. I think I will continue with this. The temperature is also dropping and I actually turned the air con off at one stage!

Skylark

Canberra

Woomera is just of the Highway by 6kms. I had expected it to be more, you know way off the road, missile testing base and all that. We rolled into the caravan park with a bit of trepidation as Maureen had looked it up on the web and some had said the guy was a bit of a nazi at times. There was 1 other van there and the office was closed, so we picked a bay and set up for the night. We unhitched

What's left of Blue Streak

My idea of a front yard

Trude and took her for a run into the town. As it is Sunday we did not expect much to be open so we were not disappointed when the first museum we went to was shut. Fortunately it has a huge outside display of all sorts of stuff. Rockets everywhere, an old Meteor and Canberra bomber are there as they were used as target planes – obviously missed these two! Bombs were also there, in fact everywhere you look there are rockets on launchers or old radar units, just amazing that what were possibly worth millions are

Lend us a rocket and look what happens

Our Satellite

now street side attractions. Woomera is my kind of town, where else can you have a rocket I your front yard. You could build your own and take it out on the range and blow stuff up! The place is made for it! Almost makes up for Maureen not letting me buy that cannon some years ago.

We decided to visit the cultural museum that I thought was across the road, so whilst I was staggering back to Trude, Maureen went off to see if it was open, well I lost sight of Maureen and when I went to where I thought she was, nothing. So off I went around the block looking for her. Turns out her

View from Pub

The Observatory

across the road was to the left and mine was to the right so basic grid search found her. To our surprise the museum was open for another 40 minutes so in we went. A great display of technology and science and how we made it all possible for England and the USA. Australia actually had our own orbital space craft in space before the Europeans and only a few years after the Russians. We did this with a left over American rocket ( I kid you not, they had brought some over for testing and when they finished they had one left over and we said, “can we have it?” and they said “sure, knock yourself out” or words to that effect. So we did, and we launched our own satellite sitting on top of it! Hope they don’t want it

Girt and Trude

Woomera Caravan Park

back! One project the British had was Blue Streak and it failed after a huge effort and expense and the politician who cut it said that the money had been spent saving another Ministers face, in fact it was the most expensive face in History. Helen of Troy’s face had launched a thousand ships, but they had all been operational. Gotta love the poms.

After we left the museum with a promise from the lady to let us in for free tomorrow so we could finish our tour, we went to the pub for a coffee and a drink. From there we went to the observatory, a small white dome in the middle of all these vacant lots. You could tell from our drive around, the

Sunset at Woomera

town was military. Old barracks and accommodation was everywhere. Some of the old ones are in use today as the range still functions but some are boarded up until needed again. The area near the observatory had obviously been developed at some stage and had since been cleared, but the roads are still there as well as the services, water and power, all ready in case it is needed.

Back at camp we met up with the manager who was a lovely chap and sorted out our booking, so far an undeserved reputation.