Day 136

Day 136 Ceduna

We certainly covered some kms today. We left a bit later than we had thought as we were a bit slack

Big Galah

Half way - says so

last night, but we were still on the road by 9:30 and heading West. As we left Port Augusta, there was a sign saying Perth. The road is pretty straight forward, even if it isn’t straight. You have to keep an eye open for signs where Highway 1 sometimes veers off, but no big hassle. The road is good and the weather is to die for. Mid 20’s, gentle breeze, light cloud to none, just perfect driving weather. We hit this little town in the middle of nowhere, it says it is halfway across Australia and has this huge galah statue, so a town that has a huge galah would not lie so we are halfway across Australia.

Giving Trude a drink

We pulled into Ceduna about 3:30 after just on 450kms  at the Beachside Caravan Park. There are about 5 or 6 Van Parks here, but this one is right on the beach. Maureen went off into town for a walk and is now down on the beach having a look there. Tomorrow we head to WA and should hit Eucla or even beyond. We pick up 2 hours at the border so we could rack up an hour or so extra driving depending on where we could get to in that time.

Ceduna

We are here

Our park next to the sea

Day 135

Day 135 Port Augusta

Today we started off to have a light day so we could rest up before going to the Great Australian

Chris our guide

Bight. We went off to the Arid Areas Botanical Garden. This was shown on the ABC’s Gardening Australia and we just had to see it. It is just 2 kms from our park and is free entry. The place is owned by the council who technically run it, but they have this group called The Friends of the Arid Areas Botanical Gardens who take on the management of the place. They are all volunteers apart from a couple of paid employees and they have collected plants from across Australia from the areas that have less than 240mm of rain. It was officially opened in 1996

 

and they have just the best collection of arid plants. They have trails setout and all are name tagged but we opted for a guided tour that they run at 10 every day. Chris was our guide and she took us around part of the garden in just under 2 hours. She was very knowledgeable about the plants and had collected some herself for the gardens. She was an absolute gem and we would highly recommend the tour to others. During the tour we saw three lovely Sand Goannas about

 

75cm long and they were not worried about us at all.

After the tour we went back inside and had lunch at the café. We finished with a selection of flavours of icecream – Quondong, Lemon Murtle, Native Lime and Lemon Pepper and they were nice. From there we drove back to town and Chris had mentioned a lookout up in the ranges and the Finders lookout which was next door. So off we went to the Finders lookout. It was really a cliff overlooking the inlet, or so I believe. Once again the car park was cordoned off by bushes so you cannot see anything unless you walk, fortunately Maureen could. We then headed for the other and took off into the hills, had we realised it was 60kms away, we might have decided not to, but we were on our way to Quorn and it is a lovely old town. I say this with certainty

Hardest wood in Australia

Lizzy

as there are no new buildings in Quorn, they are all old stone buildings and it has character plus. From there we took a side road into the hills. The road was fine for a while then it turned into a track. I thought we had made a mistake but the track was excellent. Instead of red dust and corrugations, it was white dust and smooth road. We went hooning along the track and found Buckaringa Lookout. Again you have to walk up to it, but at least you get some beautiful views from the road leading up. The Flinders Ranges are just majestic and roll along. On the way there you pass the grave of some Earl of

the Beast on the way out

View from Flinders Cliff lookout

Carysfort’s son who died during a flash flood whilst out rounding up sheep in 1852. There are also old farm buildings scattered along the route as well to show just how isolated these people were.

We drove back down to Port Augusta and went to the shops to get some tea and headed back to Girt by 5. Tomorrow we start the Eyre Highway.

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

Quorn

View from Buckaringa

View from Buckaringa

Trude taking a peak

Lonely homestead

Lonely grave

Day 134

Day 134 Port Augusta

Well we left Tanunda as we had planned. Got up at the crack of dawn – 7:30 and were packed up and

Packing ready to go

Goodbye Tununda - note clouds

on the road by 9. We had our directions from the web and headed off, what could go wrong, well I am sad to say that google maps is a little out of date and some recent road works had completed that removed 4 steps off our list. But being the intrepid travellers that we are, we actually saw the road signs as we drove past them and added 2 and 2 and did a big U-turn on the A1, as you do. We hit the right road and

Girt and Trude Port Germein

Old Pub Port Germein

headed on until we hit the water at Spencer Gulf and turned right. We pulled into Port Germein where they boast the longest wooden jetty in the southern hemisphere. It is no where near as long as Busselton, but then I suppose Busselton Jetty is no longer wood. We actually sat next to the sea here and could smell the ocean – well rotting seaweed that was on the beach and the tide was way out, but we did get that

Their little jetty

aroma of being at the beach. We had lunch there and pushed onwards and followed our noses until we hit Port Augusta.

We had been through Port Augusta on our way South to Canberra and had stopped for lunch. We had not really looked at it much and said we would stop on the way back, so here we are. We located the caravan park right at the intersection of the Eyre Highway and Sturt Highway and set up Girt. Once that was done,

Me planning for tomorrow

Views Port Augusta

we headed into town to find the lookout. It was not far from our park and was situated on the edge of the inlet here. There is an old water tower there that they have added a long staircase to so you can climb up to see the views, you have to because they have planted trees all round it so you can see nothing from the ground. To make it even easier, they do not have any parking there either, for a tourist attraction,

Look out Port Augusta

Maureen's gladwrapped paper

it scores about 1 for thinking but 10 for views for those who can climb up.

Tomorrow we plan on going to the Arid Area Botanical Gardens that we saw on Gardening Australia.

Day 133

Day 133 Tanunda

Well a quiet day today. The weather turned wet overnight so we did not expect to do much in the way

Old Church

Main street

of exploring. To start off with we went down town, I needed a cap for the hot water system to stop the water flowing following our event with the post at our last park. I went back to the van and fitted the cap whilst Maureen went for a wander down the main street. We met up at a bakery where we had lunch. We did decide to visit Bethany which is just up the road from us here and was established at the same time. We headed off into the hills and the town is really just a street of old homes and the range from early homestead style to the early 1930’s then the 60’s.

Old Museum

Old House

We went for a drive around the area and funnily enough ended up at Maggie Beers again. It was time for a cuppa so we settled down for a while. As we were about to leave, the announced that the free cooking demonstration was about to start, so off we went. Maggie has developed a product called verjuice. It is the result of crushing grapes that are not sweet enough for wine. It is a cross between wine and vinegar

Tea at Maggie Beers

Maggie eers

without the very sharpness of vinegar. She is the only one producing it commercially so she is keen to promote it. Unfortunately Maggie was not there but the guy who took it was great. He is a young guy who started work at the place 6 years ago doing the café work. Maggie took him on and had him do cooking courses and now he is training to be a teacher. He was very good at running the session and produced three dishes using the verjuice, one was pumpkin, one onions and one mushrooms. All the dished were yummy.

Cooking lesson

Maureen cooking at Maggies

Back to the van we went and the sun came out. We sat around and planned our trip home whilst enjoying the sun. We are about a week out from home so we sorted out the next steps. Tomorrow we head off to Ceduna.

Maureen cooking

Enjoying the results

Pheasant Farm

Enjoying the sun and Xmas Decorations