Day 4 in Adelaide and it’s time to head off, washing completed – but alas I am not sleeping again. Not sure why. Today is a big drive – about 400 km to a place called Melrose. Its a mountain biking mecca with a quaint, pretty little town. Caravan Park is inexpensive, has a camp kitchen, a creek and swing bridge close by and access to the school play ground. All boxes ticked. There’s a funky little shop called Joes – a real surprise – do yourself a favour and pop in (but not with a 4 year old miss with a eye for pink sparkly things). She almost insisted on high heel thongs, but as the dinosaur ones were too little settled on some pretty blue thongs with flowers on them! And I got some chocolate and kahlua chocolate sauce. We booked in for 1 night but stayed for 2 – it’s really pretty here and there’s nice family walks and a slow pace that we crave. We are starting to see red dirt. We are starting to find towns with no shop. We found 1 town called Georgetown with a couple of fun and friendly local gems behind the counter. At Laura there was a statue dedicated to C J Dennis – author of The Sentimental Bloke – sentimental to me as I performed this play with a local theatre troupe when I was about 16!
Fried rice for tea tonight we are low on supplies, and if the wind stays down a fire to toast our marshmallows by! We’ve been holding onto these truly excellent marshmallows for about 6 weeks now – well done kids – they were worth the wait weren’t they!
We now know our tent can withstand gale force winds. We have 3 nights of experiencing this, and we are one tired and grumpy family (except Charlie and Brooke who seem to sleep through everything). We had a day of travel and made it to Glendambo – who knows who else goes there but the weary traveller. For us we had nothing but wind and dust and the lack of camp kitchen meant really no choice but to eat in the restaurant. A fellow traveller pulled up beside us and we thought, excellent – a bit of a wind break. But they bought their dog, which barked all night as a big red fox kept stirring it up. It’s a double V day for sure.
It was a long but exciting days travel – the road count goes something like this
12 dead kangaroos, 10 dead cows, 2 dead sheep, 1 dead emu, 4 dead squishy things, 4 burnt out rusted cars and a road train full of camels and one blown up trailer load of 44 gallon drums.
We stopped in at Woomera for the rocket museum (closed) and wondered how the asylum seekers were hidden. The land is barren, salt bush, acacia, survive in this place. Not much else.
On to Coober Pedy – this place really doesn’t look much different since I saw it in 1988. Actually everything is a nice surprise – you shop entrance tells nothing of what is behind – under ground shops are the norm – homes too. Bit of a lazy afternoon after a 2 hour drive from Glendambo. The kids were excited to be here and use the pool. Me too, except it was only 16 degrees. More like an ice plunge. I so need a swim and some exercise – but it isn’t going to be here. I walked to the Big Winch and essentially broke in to the place, along a dirt path, over a fence – 2 more fences to jump to get out of there! Slept well. Finally.
Today we did a mine tour at Tom’s – it was so interesting – we learned so much and had the tour guide to ourselves. Looked also at Fayes underground house – 3 women dug out a house, by pick and shovel!! Did some noodling, Charlie found something oval like, otherwise we found lots of samples of gypsum. This avro we have planned a trip to the breakaways – so breathtaking scenery for tomorrow. We are staying an extra day as my mum is on the way! Arriving late tomorrow after driving from Port Augusta.
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