At the end of the day I tried to work out how we ended up arriving here so late yesterday. Part of the answer was not leaving St Kilda until about 11:00 am. We felt quite relaxed knowing we only planned to drive 200kms so took our time getting ready to leave. We looked out over the mud towards the ocean (tide out) and wished we could stay to go to look at the bird life.

I had a plan to stop at Lochiel for lunch, and then it happened. We had a call from Matt’s house about paying an invoice for some medical treatment at St John of God Medical Centre in Midland. Turns out he has a little cut above one eye and quite a lot of bruising in the eye socket. Two things, we still don’t know how the injury happened as we rang to speak with him and take a look last night. There doesn’t appear to be anything written up, not even a compulsory Critical Incident Report. The house supervisor is on leave, so will need to contact her deputy. And why was Medicare not billed for the treatment as it has been in the past. I’ll need to contact the clinic I guess.

I pulled over to speak to the staff member, but was still distracted and accidentally took the route to the Yorke Peninsula. We ended up doing a sort of round trip before we could get back on the main highway. Just before we arrived back on the highway we saw the sign to Lochiel Lookout and decided to go there for lunch. We were about an hour later than my plan.

The lookout was well worth a visit especially as the sun was out. The alternative route we had taken was actually very scenic as well. We stayed at the lookout for I think about 1.5 hours, then went down the hill to look at the lake more closely. There is a path and lookout for seeing the Eel. People were also walking out on the mud.

We pulled into the first park up in Port Pirie only to find it was closed. If I’d checked the comments in WikiCamps I would have known. However, there is also a CMCA camp in another part of town. For $15 per night for non members it is a place to sleep with a dump point and potable water taps.

We had stopped to do some shopping before going there and still had some light, but we were glad to settle. Turns out it’s next to a large shopping area so we could have come straight here and then done the shopping. However, by going to Woolies on the way we did get to see the setting sun light up the Flinders Ranges. By the time I could take photos most of the sunlight had gone, but it was still beautiful.

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And that is the story of yesterday. It started so well and we ended up so tired and arriving so late in the day. I’m waiting for Stephen to say that we must get moving earlier, say by 9:30 am, so that we don’t end up arriving so late. Especially if we want to be home in two weeks time.

The plan on the way home is to NOT stay where we have stayed before, so we drove past Crystal Brook, which would have been the best place to stay last night. Hopefully this will mostly work out well.