It’s now Saturday 29th April, 2023. On Thursday we drove to Port Augusta, with a stopover for morning tea and some shopping in Quorn. Qhorn boasts of having quite a few Australian films based in and around the town. The date on The Shiralee seemed odd, until we realised it wasn’t the original version from 1957 with Peter Finch, but a later version with Bryan Brown.

Morning tea was quongdon pie at the Qhongdon Cafe.

We stayed Thursday night at the Port Augusta Motorhome Park, a far cry from our morning at the Nooltana Creek Rise RA,

but comfortable and only $8 per night, with access to the sporting club’s toilets during opening hours, plus a dump point and drinking water tap. We had the last but one parking spot, right next to the dump point, so now and again it was smelly. I made the best of it, serving our afternoon tea amongst the bushes whilst Stephen went to pay our $8.

Stephen had his dental appointment in the morning so we had to get ready a bit early to make it to the centre of town. It was on an interesting little street of shops, but they don’t go in much for nice cafes, more clubs for gaming, with cafes attached. Still, I did find this nice coffee lounge, of the old school type. There was table service and such delicacies as pate on toast, an option I couldn’t resist.

Stephen went off to visit a museum after having his tooth looked at. It appears that the infection is settling down, but the dentist still gave him a course of antibiotics to take, which is causing some unwanted smells in the van, as you can imagine. So, he was feeling happy and enjoyed spending an hour or so getting museum legs whilst I did some window shopping and checked out the gaming cafe, which was very nice actually.

It was about 80kms from there to Port Germein along the busy highway. Although there are lots of passing lanes drivers still get impatient about us doing 90kms an hour, even trucks which are capped at 100kms an hour. I was glad to get off it and slip into the lane to our caravan park. We booked for two nights and got the last powered site. It is now cloudy with showers and I thought we needed power as we won’t be getting such good solar.

We love this little port and it’s got even better with a little cafe offering evening meals as well as traditional cafe offerings. We had a meal there last night and it was lovely, roasted chicken legs with Italian flavours, salad and wedges.

I’ve spent this morning going to the cafe for takaway coffee and breakfast roll, and doing a couple of loads of washing. We’ve put out the awning as well, which is always comforting somehow.

We went for a little walk yesterday evening before having our tea at the cafe.

Photos from Port Germein. The cafe is quirky, looks like the owner when to opp shops and chose the different pieces, including water glasses, nothing much matches but it’s attractive and interesting to browse around.

The plan is to slowly make our way down to Adelaide, staying at campsites chosen for being cheap and close to attractions. Wine regions are wasted on us, of course, as we are far more into food than wine. We don’t like to drink even small amounts of alcohol before driving and if it’s in the middle of the day it makes us sleepy anyway. Still, we may check out a winery or two on our way.

We had thought of doing a station stay for a couple of nights and Stephen had tried phoning and emailing them, but no response. In fact, they only got in touch late in the day yesterday when we had already made a dental appointment for Stephen in Port Augusta. He has been having toothache for a few days, treating with Panadol, and finally decided it was time to go. He was able to get an appointment in Port Augusta for tomorrow (Friday morning), which left us one more night in the north.

In the evening of our last night at Wilpena Pound we went to the Resort restaurant for a meal. It was a fairly casual dining experience, with good food and service. A fitting last night as although we were by then familiar with the Visitor Centre and shop we hadn’t really seen what the resort section was like. It doesn’t overwhelm the scenery and seems pretty low key.

We chose this rest stop (NCR) because by the time we finished at the gallery in Hawker it was late in the afternoon. It was much closer to come north about 10kms than to try to get to the next RA about 80kms to the south. We chose it for the wonderful views, ignoring the comments on Wikicamps about strong winds. There is a more sheltered site a couple of kms up the road, but it didn’t sound as attractive. We have one other camper here, a lone woman driving a similar camper, but with a canvas extension. I don’t know how she managed last night because it was frightening enough in our camper. At about 1.30 a.m. it started to rain and the wind died down somewhat and we were able to get back to sleep. Of course, this morning we are glad to be here enjoying the wonderful views.

Cazneaux Tree

Our first stop yesterday morning was at the Carneaux Tree, just a little north of the Wilpena Campground. It was photographed in 1937 by Harold Cazneaux who called it ‘Spirit of Endurance’. Part of the beauty of it lies in the setting and I’ve tried to replicate his photo. Well worth the stop. Yesterday was cloudy, especially in the morning, which made for a different mood for the photos.

Hucks Lookout

This is another recommended lookout, with views back to the Pound. Again, it was a wonderful spot for photography.

We stopped at another viewpoint before Hawker which had views of the Elder Range.

Jeff Morgan Gallery and Wilpena Cyclorama – Hawker

We arrived in Hawker at about 1.00 p.m. and made our way to our now favourite cafe for pies and drinks before tackling the gallery. Jeff Morgan is a local artist who has spent a lifetime painting scenes of the area. He also has an extensive rock collection and even some vintage cars. He was originally a signwriter, so his style is distinctive and somewhat realistic. He has several diaoramas as well as the circular painting of Wilpena Pound. Quite overwhelming. He was working on another diaorama whilst we were there, bringing heavy rocks inside with a wheelbarrow to make the setting before a new painting.

The Flinders Ranges experience

Have the Flinders Ranges lived up to my hopes? Definitely, and more. We’ve been able to immerse ourselves in the area and although we’ve left a lot unexplored we feel that we have the flavour of it. Very special indeed.

So, we did it. Yesterday morning it was all about going to see the interior of the Pound. It’s a huge natural ampitheatre that superficially resembles a meteorite impact crater. The interior of The Pound is 11kms long by 8kms wide, hemmed in by a series of peaks. However, it is actually thought to be the remnants of sedimentary layers of an ancient seabed that were laid down as far back as a thousand million years ago.

There are many amazing photos taken of this landscape and it’s hard to do it justice in the middle of the day. I’ve made a small movie of some of the photos and one video showing the panorama. Unfortunately it is not yet showing up when you view this blog. Maybe later.

We laid our plans carefully, preparing a packed lunch and timing our arrival at the Visitor Centre to give us time to get tickets for the shuttle bus that takes you about 2kms into the walk to The Pound. We found the actuall process a bit messy as the shuttle just leaves when full, making as many trips as necessary to pick up all the registered passengers. So, we had a bit of a wait.

On the way the driver showed us the ‘bottomless spring’ which supplies water for the Resort. It looks dark and mysterious, especially since he said that in the search for a missing child back in the last century Navy divers went down to 75 feet without finding the bottom of the spring, hence ‘bottomless’. It was a sad story as the child’s body was later found on one of the peaks in the area.

From the shuttle drop off point we took the path through to an historic homestead where the climb to Wangarra Lookouts would give us views over The Pound. There were many signs telling the history of the area and of the difficulties faced by the family who settled there. Basically, they had to overstock and went bankrupt due to government policies of the time. There is only one entrance to The Pound and they had great difficulty building a sort of road for transporting goods. The Homestead is kept in good condition, but you can’t enter the building. There were also some rustic style drop toilets and rain water tanks.

The climb up to the first viewpoint was quite easy and people who had brought kids took them up to that one. The climb to the second viewpoint was actually a really good, safe trail, but very, very steep. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath and as Stephen had left before me and got lost it took a little while for us to connect to have our sandwiches together on the shady steps.

After our climb we sat for awhile and talked with another couple about life, etc. before heading off to catch the last shuttle bus back to the Resort. Actually, we still haven’t seen the ‘resort’ part of this development, just the Visitor Centre and the camping grounds.

Today we are having a rest day. We had already decided to stay an extra night and I’m glad we booked it as Stephen is feeling a bit under the weather after his exertions yesterday. I had a few aches in the evening, but am feeling quite good today. Another load of washing has been done, as you would expect!

We loved the drive from Gulf View RA to Wilpena Pound. We stopped at Quorn to dump and fill the tank with non potable water, then had lunch at the little town of Hawker. We arrived at the Wilpena Pound resort in the afternoon. Checkin was easy and we then had to find our own camping spot in the unpowered section, which is extremely large. We were given a 10 litre box of drinking water for free and together with the one we bought at Coles it should be enough.

We made a fortunate choice in staying on the eastern side of the campground because although we have an older style rammed earth ablutions block, as opposed to newer style ones on the other side, we have a number of BBQ picnic shelters and a very well appointed camp kitchen. It’s a short walk over there for taking our dishes to be washed after meals and I even made toast and coffee there yesterday morning, and brought it back to the van.

Yesterday morning I spent quite a lot of time getting a load of washing done before we walked over to the Tourist Info Centre before lunch. Later in the afternoon we went along the walking trail for about 1.5 kilometres and plan to do a longer walk today. The trail starts off with several options which later branch off and are colour coded for difficulty. We’ve realised that we won’t get views of the Pound (a huge bowl like area) unless we get up high. I’m not sure if we can drive to a suitable lookout, that is yet to be worked out. I don’t think we can do any of the climbs. I walked at least 8kms yesterday, but I think most of that was actually getting around the campground as our evening walk was fairly short, about 2 or 3 kms.

That said, the landscape was so beautiful on our drive here and we are surrounded by high hills in the campgrounds, so we are really enjoying the environment. On the drive here we could see a jagged range of hills, which I think is the rim of the Pound. There are stations with sheep and cattle grazing all around the park and it looks like really good grazing land. Coming close to the resort we drove into what looked like a pine forest. They are a type of cypress tree, not especially tall, but it makes the environment feel different, almost as if we are in a another country. Along the creek there are lots of beautiful gum trees as well.

So, now just a few of the photos. There is a photographer based in Hawker who takes incredible panoramic views of the area and we look forward to a visit to his gallery. I don’t think my photos do it justice at all.

Just a few photos of the campground. The middle photo shows the view from our van.

First stop was in Port Augusta to have our tyres checked with a Bridgestone tyre specialist. Tyres were pumped up and Stephen reassured that we have very tough tyres. Then we went shopping at a local Coles before having lunch at Macdonalds, a Hastings tradition when visiting Augusta. My inner cheapskate enjoys the cheap prices and as a senior I find the small serves ideal.

The rest area is really only a pull off, but does indeed have views to the gulf as well as surround hills. People mentioned the wind, but that didn’t happen until about 3:00 am. If we hadn’t accidentally faced into the wind it could have been very uncomfortable, but we had luck and could enjoy the sounds without it rocking us.

We set up the Dishy for fast internet and I cooked up a meal of diced steak and vegetables. Because it needed to cook for about an hour I used the gas rather than electricity, and of course the gas bottle ran out in the night and we woke up to a fridge that was off. That’s the second time on this trip that it has happened and coincided with a leftover cooked meal that needed good cooling. It’s time for a 12v fridge,

This morning we’ve been driving throughthe ranges and enjoying the views of open country surrounded by mountains. We used the Quorn dump point and supposedly drinking water tap, then have stopped at the village of Hawker for lunch.

We’re you as captivated by the eclipse as we were? We basically planned our whole day around watching it on a livestream. Of course, we didn’t see the eclipse in person, or not very much. Stephen borrowed a safety pin and made a pinhole camera out of two pieces of cardboard. We could see a little bit of a cutaway at a later time than Exmouth of course. But basically we sat there, mostly glued to our screens watching the livestream from three different telescopes and listening to some fairly low key commentary at times.

Iron Knob was quite full overnight, which worked in our favour a bit as a large caravan next to us blocked out the bright security lights that beam out across the park. We have a normal streetlight next to us which we felt was sufficient security overnight.

Today it is onward and upward, to Port Augusta for some shopping, then as free campsite with a view of the gulf. Then, from Saturday, we have three nights booked at Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges and are looking forward to the experience.

In this area the locals advise to not drink water from taps as it isn’t safe, so we will need to buy our drinking water. However, we can use the water taps to fill our water tank as we always have separate drinking and cooking water anyway.

After lunch at the Streaky Bay pub we hung around looking out over the jetty. We found it hard to leave. But eventually we tore ourselves away and headed to our next overnight on the Eyre Highway. Minnipa provides donation camping at a little park on the side of the highway. It was noisy, but in the end we only heard passing trucks if we were already awake. The toilets were the usual.

Today we got to Kimba at lunch time and went to Eileen’s Cafe for soup. Unfortunately we are too early in the year for soup, so had to choose something else. Anyway, we like the atmosphere and the staff, despite being busy, displayed the usual South Australian hospitality.

We took advantage of the dump point and a potable water tap at the new ablutions. The camping places have expanded so much since we first started going there a few years ago. Now it felt too busy, so we travelled on to a similar donation camp at Iron Knob. We are in a dusty little town on the other side of the hill from the mining operation. It’s picturesque.

We’ve definitely decided not to go up to Innamincka due to the road being mostly gravel. Not that we will escape travelling on gravel roads. The sea lion view point was out along a gravel road, mostly in good condition, but when we were leaving to go to our camping spot we were treated to an alarm, which we thought was the gas alarm, but the next day found it was because the step wasn’t sitting properly and it has an alarm if you drive off. This was the first time it has happened and was both scary and immensely annoying. Now that we know the alarm is from the step, we manually push it into place after using the electric button and can get rid of the annoying sound.

The step has been playing up since it got clogged with mud on the Hyden-Norseman Road. Stephen has cleaned it a few times and applied WD40, but it still has problems intermittently.

We will be on gravel roads in the Flinders Ranges, but also not too far from a sealed road and a couple of towns, where we can take refuge if it rains heavily. Our plan now is to get on with the next stage of the trip by exploring the Flinders Ranges and looking for walking tracks, etc.

We were feeling relaxed yesterday morning as as a decision had been made to explore more of the surrounds of Streaky Bay. I wanted to see the sea lions, but first we went to the Tourist Bureau, then to the pharmacy for QV soap, then to the bakery for pasties and coffee. You can see how relaxed we were by how quickly lunchtime came up😀

My research on WikiCamps had found possible camping spots near Point Labatt and this meant we could spend time there without having to get back to town before dark.

We spent about 2.5 hours watching the sea lions. They mostly just lie lazily in the sun, but sometimes move about in their clumsy way. So different to when they are in the water. We viewed them from a platform high above on the cliff, so my long lens and Stephen’s binoculars came in handy. So good they they are perfectly safe from humans as well as predators in this spot.

At about 5:00 we drove to the nearest campsite about 6 kilometres away. There is a caravan nearby, but we’ve chosen a camping spot away from them. We could see another caravan in the distance, but it left by 8:30 am. We’ve had a very peaceful night with only a couple of mozzies. As we are on the other side of the peninsula from the sea lions we were able to watch the sun rising over water this morning.

We hung around at Wrighty’s this morning, reluctant to leave such a lovely spot. Eventually we packed up, realising that we really did need water and a dump point.

Our rest day at Penong was very restful, partly due to rain. We went for a walk in the late morning and had coffee and jam and cream scones at the little cafe/supermarket. In the late afternoon we went for a walk around the famous Penong windmills and got caught in a heavy squall. There was some shelter, but the wind made the rain come through anyway. At the end of the squall we were rewarded with a wonderful rainbow.

We had picked up some brochures on South Australia and I found out something rather important, that the road up to Innamincka from Lyndhurst is mostly gravel. I thought the only part of the trip to the Dig Tree that was gravel was the road out of Innakincka. It might be that we don’t want to tackle that road. Anyway, we don’t need to make a decision at this stage. Map programs don’t show whether roads are gravel or not as they would always be risk being wrong as conditions change. But the brochure clearly shows which sections are gravel and which paved.

I was wanting to make a sort of slight diversion to go to Streaky Bay. We’ve visited in the past, the first time when we were travelling with Eversley and she decided to take a two night break from driving. Streaky Bay. I think we’ve been here twice as we have stayed at the two caravan parks. One is on the foreshore and the other one is a bit out of town and we loved it because it was so clean and new with ensuite style ablutions. On Wikicamps people are still raving about the ablutions!

However, Streaky Bay now offers a low cost camping option next to it’s sporting complex. $15 per night with access to traditional SA concrete Krappas (flushing toilets to the rest of us). After stopping in Ceduna for THE SHOP (the great one you have after not having access to a supermarket for days), and some lunch, we drove down to Streaky Bay. I had forgotten it is a farming village, with giant wheat silos and some very old and well kept houses. It is located on a tiny sheltered bay that is part of a much larger bay on the Eyre Peninsula.

Yesterday we were tired after shopping and travelling, but still wanted to walk to the beach, so we waited until close to sunset. We weren’t sure of the way, but knew the general direction and it’s only about a 10 minute walk, especially as we walked through the caravan park out to the shoreline. The caravans are lined up very close to the water up a little rise, but I don’t think the park actually owns the beach.

The water is calm and shallow and we enjoyed watching the shorebirds, including a great flock of pelicans who were being fed by fishermen on the beach. After that it was back to the van for dinner. We are enjoying having fresh salads. We chatted with Matt after tea. They leave him on his own with us, which works better now that they finally have NBN at his house so they don’t get dropouts. He even found it entertaining to watch us doing the dishes.

We chose a camping spot overlooking some bushland, but we had quite an infestation of mossies last night. We are thinking of driving off and exploring around here, then coming back for another night, but we will try a different position away from the bushland.

If you are wondering what happened with our leaking ceiling, the leak occurs where the bedroom curtain rail seems to have caused a bit of a split in the otherwise smooth ceiling. At Penong I taped most of it up, but left room for rain to come through as having it stay in the roof didn’t seem like a good idea. We were on a bit of a tilt as well, which I thought might let the rain roll off the roof, rather than pooling. We don’t get leaking when we are travelling as even heavy rain is rushed off again. Now I’m not sure what has worked as we didn’t have anymore leaking at our campsite in Penong despite occasional heavy rain. There is a caravan repair and service place in Port Augusta and we may call in there for advice.

The update is due to having time to process some of the images in Lightroom. I am using a ‘travel’ lens 24-240mm and it tends to overexpose the images. It was fairly cheap and I hoped for a lens that could zoom in for wildlife as well as being reasonable for landscapes. But, the images do need processing properly.