Jaypatrol

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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 21st, 2006 at 11:41 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.