Sleepless in South Australia

I'm not sure what I was expecting from our great adventure, but to say that it got off to a less than smooth start might be an understatement.

We had a wonderful evening celebrating Liam's 21st, with friends and family sharing food, memories, laughs and cake.  It was a lovely way to mark a milestone and I hope he enjoyed it as much as we did.  The celebrations didn't last too late, and we were tucked up in bed, ready for an early start the next day.

The rest of the household weren't as excited about our departure as we were obviously, as no one made it up to say goodbye.  Our goodbyes had all been said the night before, and we'll be in contact regularly, so I don't know what I was expecting at 7.00am on a Saturday morning.  Maybe streamers and balloons and lots of bon voyage music, but I had to make do with a selfie of us, in the pouring rain, ready to hit the road.

We had an uneventful day, travelling over country that we knew well, so our objective was to get as far away as possible.  We had morning tea in Beaufort, lunch in Nhill and barrelled through to Murray Bridge for our first night's stop.  Here is where Day 1 gets interesting.  We had found a free camp just out of town, having located it on an app that lists these things.  Well, even with GPS coordinates, we couldn't find anything that vaguely looked like a spot to pull off and camp, so as it was getting late, and we were tired, we headed for a caravan park in town.

A lot of thought went into finding this caravan park, as we'd stopped in a park in Tailem Bend on a trip two years ago, which was right beside the highway and were "rocked" to sleep all night by the sounds of large trucks and their engine brakes.  So this time, we found a quiet little park at the far end of town, right on the Murray.  It seemed idyllic!!!

 

 

That is, until about 10.30pm, when the house across the road from the park cranked up the music, as someone (Caitlin or Cailem, I couldn't quite distinguish which) was having a birthday.  Well, they must have invested heavily in sound equipment, as it did a wonderful job of spreading the joys of techno music over the entire area.  And add to that the random fireworks being let off at what seemed like the next site to us, we didn't get much sleep.  The police came round about 1.30am, and the music subsided for a bit, then up it went again.  I called the police about 2.30am, and again it subsided, but ramped up again............... and so on.

 

Not to worry, we got a good, hot shower and were on the road again by 9.30am the next morning, if a little bleary.

 

Sunday was an absolutely beautiful day, crisp and cold (not getting above 11 degrees all day) but lovely sunshine.  We took a dawdle up through the Barossa and Clare Valleys, through all the vineyards.  It's such a pretty area.   Little, pretty towns with the most beautiful stone buildings.  We had a lovely trip. 

 

 

 

We arrived at Wilmington, in the southern Flinders, mid afternoon, and had planned to take in the Landrover museum, which we'd heard about.  It was an experience.  The old couple that own the Wilmington Toy Museum have included a whole room dedicated to toy/model Landrovers and other memorabilia of the marque. 

 

 

 

 

 

To top it all off, the old guy has a serious collection of full-size Landrovers in the garden.  Doug found one that he wanted to take home for Tom.

 

 

Camp from here was a short drive out of town to a place called Hancock's Lookout, a beautiful spot overlooking Spencer Gulf and across to the Iron Knob.  We were lucky to only share this spot with a couple of other 4WDs and a couple of caravans.  What a beautiful way to spend an evening............... or so we thought.

 

 

 



 

 

Around 9pm it started getting a bit breezy, so we retreated inside the camper.  The wind continued to build until by 11pm it was blowing an absolute gale, and we were huddled in bed wondering if the camper was going to stand the night.  We got up, put layers of clothes on, because by this time, it was freezing cold, and tied a rope round and round the camper to tie the roof down.  Back to bed and the wind pounded us all night, making sleep almost impossible.  We heard the two caravans packing up sometime in the middle of the night and moving on, but if we'd tried to pack the camper up, I'm sure the roof would have blown off it.



 

So morning came, and the wind had dropped a bit.  It was early, but after a swift coffee, we decided to take advantage of a drop in the wind, and get things packed away and head off.  It would be ok.  There were plenty of coffee shops in Port Augusta to keep us going.  Who needed sleep?

 

We arrived in Port Augusta just before 9am.  I had been having problems with my laptop since leaving home (typical isn't it.........worked fine at home).  Anyway, I thought I would try to get it fixed while in the last big town we would be in for a while.  Asking at the local electronic shop if he knew anyone who could do the job, the nice man sent us in the direction of Walt's Computers. 

 

Sure he said.  No problem, bring it round in about an hour.  So we dawdled in Maccas, filled the fuel and water tanks and then made our way to Walt's.  In a hard-to-find back street of Port Augusta we found his "shop". 

 







 

To say I approached with a bit of trepidation was putting it mildly, but although it was the mostly unlikely of premises, Dennis Walter, one-time truckie and now computer handyman, was the genius I needed.  He fixed my issues, didn't charge me the earth and had us on the road again in about an hour.

 

So now it was midday, and we still had 550km to go to Coober Pedy.  So it was back to "get as far away as possible" as we put the head down and bum up and took off up the Stuart Highway. 

 

After two nights of very little sleep, we decided to stay in a caravan park rather than risk the elements again in the camp spots outside town.  They seemed a bit open to the elements, and this blogger needs some sleep tonight.

 

We've checked into a powered site, have the fan heater and computer running without a care, and as soon as I click "Save" for this post, I'm off to bed.

 

Coober Pedy and beyond is waiting for tomorrow.................