Day 112

Day 112 Port Pirie

Len Beadell

Medicine chest

We got up early as the lovely lady at the museum said we could get in free as we were so late yesterday and they opened at 9am. We got up at 7:30 and sat around having breakfast until nearly 9 and then we upped tent pegs, harnessed the camels and headed off to town in an Easterly direction. We found the museum and toured through the cultural section. It is a great little museum about life out there and how it changed from an army camp into a town with both military and civilians mixing together. They also had a great section about Len Beadell who was the guy who surveyed the site for the range. He was also instrumental in opening up the interior of the country. His job was to survey the land and create a road where he went, one of those was the Gun Barrel   Highway. He would drive along in his landrover surveying the land and setting out paths for a following grader to make the road. When he got too far ahead for the grader driver to see, he would stand on his car and flash a mirror for the driver to aim at. As the grader driver said, he followed that light for 3 years and never caught it. I am a bit of a fan of Len’s and read his book when I was young and it did inspire me to

Len's old shoes

Survey markers

travel in the North West, just not as much as I would have liked. Here is a man who would drive off into the unknown and be gone for months on end until his work was done, I am sure he was the last great explorer of Australia. There is a great little item there of the grave of a local farm manager who died after drinking water to prove to his workers that it was not poisonous!

Map of where len Surveyed

American influence

After visiting town last night and seeing the old barracks and not being able to visit the launch areas, I was trying to think how I could do it and thought the easiest way would be by using children, not mine others – students. Last night i thought out a 2 year plan to develop and run an after school rocket club with a small group of students with the aim of building a 3 stage rocket and approaching the governing bodies to see if we could do a trip over here to Woomera, stay in the barracks and test launch our rockets! I think this would work. I had toyed with the rocket club thing before but needed an end target. Pity I won’t be at school, but there is an idea for someone keen enough.

Spare launcher

Cafe redecorated at Spuds

We drove around to the other museum, but it was closed despite its sign so we gave up on it and turned our expedition southwards towards Port Augusta. We stopped off at Spud’s roadhouse in Pimba, 6kms down the road for gas and for the first time in months gas was less than $1 per litre, admittedly 99.9c but less. They also had a dinner there that Maureen loved as they had just refurbished it in old style.

We hit the highway and headed off. The countryside is starting to change from red dirt to a lighter

Pimba Caravan PArk

View towards Port Augusta

pink dirt. It was still pretty flat but we started to hit some undulations as we got nearer to Port Augusta and then the Flinders Range appeared and we were between the coast and the Ranges. We dropped into Port Augusta as I was dying for a pie, no real reason why, but all of a sudden I had to have one. We drove around town looking for a place to park a caravan whilst being close to shops. We did find a spot and Maureen went out hunting and gathering and returned with our pies. She had found a little French bakery and as well as the pies, came back with a collection of cakes full of cream. They apparently were so

Nearing Port Augusta

Flinders Ranges

cheap she could not resist them. Problem is neither of us could eat much as there was too much cream! There was this tour bus that drove by us with a rather funny sign on it saying don’t drive like a and the a “W” and a picture of an Anchor, brought a smile.

Back on our path, we drove down to Port Pirie. It was possibly too far to go and we could have stopped closer to our turn off for tomorrow, but it was the only place that said it had a park near the

Flinders Ranges

beach and we needed a dose of salt air. We pulled into the town and followed the signs for a caravan site until they disappeared and we got stuck in the middle of town. We rang the site and they directed us to where they were, driving out of town, there were suddenly all these directions to the Caravan park, you just cannot read them driving in.

We have stopped at Port Pirie for the night and Maureen got her bike out and went for a ride into town. Tomorrow we intend to head inland and strike out for Canberra.

It was just sitting there and no one wanted it