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.

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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.

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