And so into South Australia, with a time change to 1.5 hrs. The nice thing about staying in SA for the rest of our trip is that we don’t have to worry about any more time changes until we are heading home again.

Yesterday we stopped at Border Village to get fuel, dump the toilet and get bread, then on our way again. The South Australian quarantine station is located near Ceduna, so we won’t cross that barrier until tomorrow. We got some pretty heavy rain yesterday morning and it confirmed that we have a leaking roof and it drips on the bed. This happened a bit when we were at the Breakaways, but not as badly. We stayed at Whitewell yesterday morning until there was a break in the weather and the dripping (sometimes pouring) water stopped. A system of bin bags, our basin and a tray helped to capture the water. We have a quilt on top of our doona and that seemed to capture all of the wet without wetting the doona. Whilst we were driving it rained heavily but the water couldn’t stay on the roof long enough to pool and start a new flood.

The drive from Eucla to Whitewell on Friday was in good weather, except for a strong wind. We didn’t feel the need to go out to view the cliffs at any of the many viewpoints as our experience is that the wind makes it very unpleasant. We were so lucky last year that when we camped at Bunda Cliffs it wasn’t windy.

We stopped at the Nullabour Roadhouse for icecreams and spoke with a man who was cycling from Gold Coast to Perth. He was very stiff from his ride and wanted to check in a set up his tent, but we kept him talking for a little while. He is about to turn 60 and said this trip was sort of a very, very late mid life crisis. Sensibly he intends to fly home from Perth, not take the return journey by bicycle.

Once at Whitewell, which is fairly close to Nullabour Roadhouse, we set ourselves up near the fence and prepared for our Facetime session for a Working Voices committee meeting. Ellen has an ipad that she set up facing Yvonne and we managed to get a bit of business sorted, including closing down the website and relying on the Facebook page for our online presence. Then they organised what they will do for May Day as the choir has been asked to sing.

Yesterday, as I said, we waited until there was a break in the rain to set off for Penong. Fairly shortly after leaving Whitewell the vegetation changes completely, back to bush instead of low, grey shrubs. We still had quite a lot of rain on the journey and were gratefull to be accommodated at the Penong Caravan Park. People are booking ahead as the closure of the top bitumen road to Western Australia means most traffic going East and West comes via the Eyre Highway and we have noticed that the free camps are usually very busy. You do get a bit spoilt on the Eyre Highway as there are lots of rest areas, including places that are good for camping because you can get away from the highway. However, they tend to be very busy overnight.

We had a bit of communication with Matt yesterday. Dad Brian organises Matt’s HBF membership and asked if we could get his bill paid, he said he will reimburse Matt later. In the end I had to pay online as Matt cannot identify himself over the phone and they would have had to go to HBF in person. They showed us Matt’s new iron on labels. I ordered them online and had them sent to him. His name is very clear and we hope they actually stay on during multiple washes. Matt and Eli were labelling his new sheets and pillowcases.

We were feeling quite exhausted yesterday evening and decided we will stay here another night. That gives us a day to do some planning for our South Australian travels and gives me time to catch up on this blog. We are low on fruit and veggies, but people sometimes leave them here due to the quarantine station, so we hopeful of having some donated fruit.

I’m taking advantage of the lovely washers and dryers here. They are large, front loading models and don’t squish things too much. I did our towels last night and will do a load of clothing today sometime.