Blog 7 City of Church’s.

Arrived in Adelaide on the 27th and booked into the Brighton Beach Caravan Park, nice spot, we got a good spot behind a sand dune which protected us from the cold wind, but on a good day just had to walk to the top of it and got a great view.

Good Day

 Not so good Day

As the caravan park was on the beach of the gulf of St Vincent, the sunset over the water, got some great sunset photos from here.

We visited the Army History unit at Keswick barracks, and ran into Steve the WO I met at the Museum course in Melbourne. He showed us around; of course I had to buy one of their “digger dogs”.

They have a great museum, lots of great gear, got taken over to see their archives room, could hardly move, there was stuff piled high, they have a fantastic collection of documents, newspaper, photo etc.

Their displays are well done and informative.

They only open on Sundays, and have a volunteer staff of approximately 60 people, wish we had that many.

Of course we had to do the Wineries, went down first to the Mclean Valley and found the Rosemount cellar doors, and tried their wines like I was some sort of expert, the country side down there was beautiful

Another day we went up to the Barossa and found this creek I was quite familiar with

The grape vines at this stage are in the process of being pruned, talking to the locals (whilst sampling their wines) it’s quite an art to prune them, they have to get it right to maximize their grapes quality and quantity.

Went for lunch with Percy and Michelle, Barry and Glenda had left Adelaide and were heading back north, then went over to their place for coffee, they live in the Adelaide hills, got a nice spot with great views, beside a nature reserve, Percy tried to make out it was his land, I wasn’t fooled J.

Did lots of other exploring, went into town on the train and visited the markets in the middle of the city, got on the train home and unbeknown to us caught an express, so we had to get off past our station and go back, oh well all the more fun. We went for drives through the hills, when the signs say beware koala’s they are true, this fellow was casually strolling along the road like he owned it, had the traffic holed up, but finally decided to have a rest in the fork of a tree,

We drove down to Cape Javis to have a look at Kangaroo Island, didn’t go over though. Stopped on the way back at a nice pub with a fire going for lunch, could have sat there all afternoon. The drive through the country was fantastic.

Packed up on Sunday the 5^th ready to go the next day and Percy and Michelle came over for drinks and to say goodbye.

Next is to follow the Murray.

Blog 6  Opals and Missiles

On the 14^th   we left Uluru and travelled back to the Stuart Highway and camped again at Erldunda, then drove down over the border into South Australia,

to Marla, another road house/pub/caravan park. From there we made our way down to Coober Pedy. The country side is getting barer and barer, with less trees and more gibbers and sand.

Getting into Coober Pedy the first things you see are these piles of dirt,

The next thing is a warning sign

Set up camp at the local caravan park, but couldn’t find where to connect into the water, on asking I was told there are only 4 sites with water, “Did you want water?? So we shifted site to the last site with water. The two caravans next to us were travelling together, Percy and Michelle had come up from Adelaide to meet up with Barry and Glenda who are from Beaconsfield in Mackay, they had come across through Townsville and were going down to Adelaide. Got invited over for drinks that night and again next night.

Well Coober Pedy is certainly different, tidy town of 2012 its most definitely not, it is a very dry (water that is) town, so there is no grass anywhere, a lot of the houses are underground with just some sort of shed/entrance out the front, with 80% of the population living underground. There is heaps of old equipment lying around everywhere, the place looks like the local dump.

Coober Pedy is taken from the Aboriginal words “Kupa Piti” which means “whitefellow burrow”.

Did a trip out to the Breakaway Mountains, you are driving along till you get to this spot and all the sudden the ground falls away from you. You don’t realise how high you are till you get there, it’s quite spectacular.

We stayed in Coober Pedy a couple of days then packed up and moved south again to Woomera, home of the rockets etc, a different town, very neat and tidy, with hardly any activity, apparently the town with all its houses is kept well maintained for visiting people when they are doing their rocket stuff, you can only live there if you have a full time job. We visited the local museum, don’t ya just hate it when visiting a museum and you see gear that you used to work on and understand it.

Not that I ever worked on rockets, but some of the stuff inside I knew.

From here we moved south again down to Port Augusta, at the tip of the Spencer Gulf the beginning of the Southern Ocean. It was great to see the sea again; we have now travelled from the north of Oz (Darwin) down to the south of Oz.

On the way down some interesting road signs promoting safer driving:

Port Augusta caravan park was nice we had a site on the “beach” front, had a 6 foot fence with barbed wire between us and the beach, Again met up with the mob from Coober Pedy, Glenda and Barry from Mackay and Percy and Michelle from Adelaide, walked down to the local footy ( AFL) club that night and had dinner, good meal, had a good night, few drinks and lots of laughs.

Went for a drive down to Whyalla, the steel town on the other side of the gulf, came across another one of those South Australian road signs

After Port Augusta we moved on, heading towards Adelaide