Today, Saturday, we left Peterborough after we had our caffeine fix for the morning in a cafe in the main street. It is a quite popular destination.
We had some spectacular scenery this morning as we travelled towards Port Augusta. Not long after we left our overnight location, we started to see a change in the landscape. In the distance, we could see the hills that ultimately we would have to climb over.
In South Australia, there is what is known as the Goyder Line. This line was drawn on maps by a surveyor, Goyder, who was tacked by the government of the day to investigate the areas of the state that would be reliable for farming. History has shown that he was not far wrong as those that decided to farm on the north of that line eventually became insolvent. The countryside is littered with deserted farm buildings. As we go further into the Flinders Ranges we, apparently, will see many more of these deserted buildings.
The countryside that we have driven through during the past day or so looks very good as they have had some good falls of rain. The crops growing near the road look very healthy. One can only hope that these farmers do get a good crop as they have not had good crops for quite a while.
As we drove along we passed through the small communities of Orroroo and Wilmington as well as some smaller localities. Before too long we came over a rise and in front of us was farm land in the foreground with Spencer Gulf in the middle with a background of quite high hills. What a wonderful sight. It is such a contrast to the dry red of Broken Hill and is only about 400 kilometres away.
The descent down the road to the Princes Highway was wonderful with that Spencer Gulf reaching out to us. As we joined the Highway we turned North West with the Gulf on our left. After we had driven about 20 kilometres we started to enter the Port Augusta area. We passed the NRG Flinders-Augusta Power Station which generates almost 40% of the State’s needs.
Driving along the Princes Highway we were soon in the city and the GPS was guiding us to the Shoreline Caravan Park. The Park has a magnificent view to the east of the Flinders Ranges.
Port Augusta is known as the “Crossroads of Australia” due to the highways from the east and from the Northern Territory and Western Australia converge. Also, the railways do the same with the famous “Ghan” to and from Darwin and the “Indian Pacific” to Perth to and from Sydney. We can see and hear the massive railway freight trains being assembled to go in various directions located across the Gulf which is not very wide.
After we had set up, I managed to run too much water around and had to do some drying in the Karavan. No real harm done just an inconvenience especially as both of us were not feeling as well as we could be with our coughs. Prue is worse than me at the moment but hopefully we will get over it soon.
During the afternoon, we went to get a few things at Coles. Prior to this, we went to the Wadlata- Outback Discovery Centre or Information Centre. Initially, we had a cappuccino and then looked around some of the items of information.
The day was drawing to an end so I cooked up some steak, onions and tomato on the barbeque while Prue cooked some vegetables inside. While doing this we had two separate visits from fellow travellers that were interested in the Kimberley Karavan. It is a great way to attract and chat to people. So far, we have not seen another KK. We are wondering where the next one will be visible. So we finished off the cooking and had several glasses of wine with dinner, purely for medicinal purpose of course!