Jaypatrol

Here we are camping at Roxby Downs. We are certainly in the outback now.
After we left Port Augusta yesterday, we headed toward Woomera. The scenery along the way is awesome with vast areas of outback landscape. We stopped off at a roadside stop and took some photos for the album. This stop had a lot of information boards and a great view of the Flinders Ranges in the distance.
We traveled along the road and I vowed never to say again that the Geelong to Melbourne road is boring.

On reaching Woomera, we pulled in to look at the various exhibits on the roadside. This is very educational. There is even the remnants of Australias first satelite in the display. We then went to the information centre and we decided to check out the museum whilst we were there. This is about the early days of the Woomera base and the reasons for setting up this area in the first place. We learned a lot about the area from this display, it was so informative and included different aspects of the base; including original rockets, satelites, plane fuselages etc.

After having lunch when we got back to the car, we continued our journey to Roxby Downs and checked into the Caravan Park that we had booked into a few days earlier. Lindy followed us and we met up again a couple of hours later in the Park.

We have really enjoyed her company and all the information she has shared with us. She really is the highlight of our trip to date.

Today after Arthur saw the doctor, (He has hurt his back and now has sciatica ), all three of us headed out to Andamooka. This was such an eye opener. This township has sprung up because of the opal mining in the area. Andamooka supports about 50 full time miners. The area has no city or town council and there are no made roads, or even any rates to pay. There aren’t any building regulations either. So the township is a most interesting one. We stopped off at the supermarket to buy some lunch; that was an interesting exercise in itself.

We then visited the ‘Bottle House’ and took some photos had a look at some different opals in the store. These were lovely and the lady behind the counter explained the different ways they prepare them for sale. The one I liked the most was a large pale blue stone that was on sale for $100.000. A bit out of our league.

After leaving the shop we went to the local cemetery. This is quite a small one and it is interesting to note that a lot of the graves were very simple with very little information on the headstone, if they did have one. Most didn’t have a birthdate, only the date of death. A couple of the graves had opal on the grave and quite large pieces of it at that.

After leaving the cemetery, we drove to another opal shop after a recommendation. The lady here was certainly a character. Her father was a miner in the area over 50 years ago and she had returned to find his original mine. Unfortunately, there were very few or no records in those days and she still has not found it after 4 years. She loves the area and intends to stay and work her own mine anyway. Her sons have been doing all the heavy work for her, but they had decided to try somthing new and have gone away to work as jackaroos. This poor lady is on her own and misses her young boys a lot.

We finally decide to head back to the camp. On the way back we came across 2 wedge-tailed eagles feeding on roadkill of kangaroo. We turned around and went back to get some photos of them. Lindy also took some video.

We headed homeward again. For our happy hour before Lindy retired early as she heads to Coober Pedy tomorrow as she is booked into a tour and the mail run tour the following day. We will meet up with her again when we arrive there the following day. We are booked into a tour of the mine here in Roxby tomorrow and then we will head off early on Wednesday morning for Coober Pedy. We are booked in for the mail run on the 29th, so we will be there for at least 6 days before heading to Alice Springs.

Update: We went on the tour of the BHP Copper mine at Roxby Downs. This is such a massive place. It is mostly mined underground. Their main purpose for mining here is for the Copper. But they also get Gold, Silver and Uranium. Though the Uranium is of lower quality from here.

It was a very informative tour and opened our eyes to how they sort out the different minerals that they collect from the mine. Interesting indeed.

To be continued…

We eventually arrive at Port Augusta, tired and weary from the long drive.

Coming into Port August is not as we expected. There are miles of outback saltbush and native Australian vegetation.

We eventually find the Big 4 Caravan Park and after setting up camp, I head for the laundry. It was a warm day, so I managed to catch up on all the laundry and get it dried, with a little ironing and put it all away.

The first day, after the domestics were finished, we ventured into the township and the tourist centre. This is the ‘Wadlata Outback Centre’. We ended up looking through this display. It was very
interesting. There was the aboriginal section when you first enter, with photos and displays of the area and the aboriginal background. Then you move on to the outback displays and the history of the early pioneers in the area. This is a fascinating display about the hardships in the harsh outback of the time, including the times of prosperity and the harshness in times of draught. I am glad I didn’t live in those days; they were certainly a tough people to survive the era.

Then the next part of the display was about the early mining days. This is an excellent display with a short movie to view and then there were individual displays to view and listen to via a telephone handset. We came away from there fascinated by the creativity of the designers of the displays as much as the awesome people of these times. We then head back to the caravan for the night.

Arthur still wanted to get back on the road the next morning, but needed to check out a couple of camping stores first. Whilst he was waiting for me to get ready to go, he met the lady in the mobile home next door to us in the park. This turned out to be the highlight of our time here. Lindy is a wealth of information as she had worked in the travel industry for many years and also had traveled extensively herself with her husband. We had intended to stay for 1 to 2 days, but after meeting this lovely lady, we sought out a few things we could check out and stayed on for 3 days.
Later in the morning we joined her on a tour of the ‘Arid Lands Botanical Gardens’. This was a very interesting tour. I will never take the outback flora for granted again. I didn’t know that each of these plants, trees and shrubs played a role in keeping the balance in the outback. This garden took ten years to plan and setup and is still changing with the seasons. Most of the flora had a flower and a fruit that was spectacular when in bloom. Unfortunately, we were not there at the right time to see most of the flowering, but did see some flowers. This has been a much needed display for us to learn of how the aborigines used these plants for food and medicine. It is unfortunate that the early pioneers didn’t realise the importance of this valuable vegetation when they cleared the land for farming. 8-( Arthur forgot to take our camera with us, so we had to rely on Lindy to take the photos. She graciously copied them to CD for us.

At Lindys suggestion, we all decided to catch the old steam train, the ‘Pichi Richi’ the next morning (Saturday) for the day tour of the surrounding area on route to Quorn. This was a great experience as we had our own personal tour guide, a 17 year old railway enthusiast named Jason. This young man was a wealth of information. He had a burning desire to drive these trains one day in the near future. Unfortunately, our video camera decided to throw in the towel on the way and we didn’t get any film footage of the trip. Thankfully, Lindy did the videoing and has copied her tape to a DVD for us once again. Where would we be without her?

Tomorrow we start out early and travel to Roxby Downs. We have a tour of the mine booked for when we all arrive. Lindy is traveling to there as well and will accompany us on the tour. We are all looking forward to another tour together.

So stay tuned for the next installment of the life of Arthur and Dawn on the road.

We leave Mildura after 2 days of looking around. We had pulled into the Buronga Caravan Park on the other side of the Murray River.

We enjoyed our time there, but will have to go back as we didn’t see all we hoped to.

We did go to Red Cliffs and check out the “Big Lizzie” and took photos.
It has a very interesting history.

We pass through Irymple, traveling on the Sturt Highway. This is a mostly long straight road to the South Australia border.

Either side of the road, there are firstly grape vines as far as the eye can see and then wheat fields as far as one can see till we come to the Sunset Country, which is the Murray Sunset National Park. This has different terrain of a type of salt bush for miles on end till we reach the SA border.

Not long after the border, we are stopped at the Quarantine Station where we surrender 2 onions and a little bit of lettuce we had left. We were allowed to keep the sweet potato we had. As we were pre-warned we made sure we used all the other fruit and vegetables before we left Mildura.

After filling the fuel tank we headed toward Renmark, turning off the Sturt Highway, we head down the B64 highway through Barmera and then onto Morgan, (following the meandering Murray River along the way), where we stopped off to have our cut lunch and a rest. Whilst there, we met a man named Ken. He told us of different places we plan to visit when we come back this way later in the year.

Leaving Morgan, we intend to aim for Crystal Brook, but by the time we get to Burra about 1.30pm South Australian time, we are weary and were intrigued by this township, so decided to spend the night at the local Caravan Park.
Here we meet some lovely folk and start to really feel like we are on our journey at last.

We wandered around the town during the afternoon checking out a little of the history; buying a little meat at the butcher shop where the original butcher was sited in the 1800’s. Arthur met a local school teacher and she told him about a tour of the town we could take after stopping off at the Information Centre to collect a key to open doors of different buildings in the town. As we are only staying here for one night, this is another must see on the way back.
Tomorrow we head for Port Augusta, passing through Crystal Brook and Port Pirie.

7th May 2006

We have finally begun our journey.
We left our friends place where we stored our caravan at 10.20am to meet up with Matthew & Pauline in Werribee to say our goodbyes.
Matthew had done some last minute tweaking on the laptop before we left. So we needed to collect it on the way through.
It was a good time to have our final hugs and kisses before we left.
(Even though they rang us on the mobile 10 minutes later to tell us that they missed us already)

Next stop-off point was at David (Arthur’s Nephew) & Sandra’s in Stanhope to meet the newest arrival in the family. A little bundle of joy that arrived 3 months ago. His name is Haidyn and we enjoyed lots of hugs, kisses and smiles from him.

We will need to invest in another blanket for the bed in this weather.
We left early the next morning (Monday) and stopped in Shepparton to pick up a water conditioner that Arthur had ordered previously.

We then headed for Cohuna for a weeks rest, (after the stress of packing up the house and finalising everything with the surgeon for Arthur).
After setting up camp in the local caravan park, we went to visit Arthur’s Mum and sister Mary and hubby, Evan.
Not long after we arrived, Matthew rang again to keep in touch with our travels so far.
Mum had prepared a lovely meal for us and we enjoyed a warm cosy evening of catching up on news of family and friends.

We headed back to the caravan just before 10pm to have an early night as we had planned a few tasks for the next few days.
One being organising the caravan so that we can find things. Before we left at the last minute, we just threw things into cupboards so that they wouldn’t fly around whilst we were travelling, but this morning we couldn’t find quite a few things. So the tidy up is a priority.

Tonight the caravan is nice and cosy, so I hope it isn’t too cold and we get a well earned good night sleep finally.

The clock is ticking down to the  time to leave on our new adventure. The Big Trip around Australia!

We hit the road on the 7th of May after putting on hold for another 3 weeks as Arthur needed to have surgery before we left.
So instead of setting off on the 10th of April as planned, Arthur was having his surgery that day instead.

Thankfully, most of our belongings were put into storage before his operation, as he is not able to do any lifting or straining till after his check-up with specialist on Tuesday-2nd May.

We are flat out packing up the rest of the house and storing our remaining belongings for the duration of our absence.

Friends will be moving into our house after we leave. They will be house-sitting for us, also taking care of “Comet” our dog.  We will miss him (Comet that is),  but are reassured that he is good hands.

Hopefully we haven’t forgotten anything that needs to be finalised.

Matthew (Son) is in the process of setting up our very own domain. We will inform everyone when that happens.

So next time I add to this blog, we willl be on the road and happy travellers.