Australia – The East Bit – Days 1 2 & 3 Adelaide to Erldunda

Day 1 Adelaide to Port Augusta  6 July 2016   312km

The day has finally arrived. We have been talking about doing this holiday since we did the Western Loop about 5 years ago. (Read back in our blog if you want to catch up on what we did way back then!)

I guess we both woke around 6 and by 6:30 we had begun getting everything loaded into the car. We had picked the Caravan up yesterday morning and took it to Carly’s so it was close and we could get the fridge running. In the afternoon we loaded the fridge and freezer, and a few other bits and pieces.

Around 8:45 we were in the car with Aiko and on our way to Carly’s. Aiko has known something was going on for quite a few days. She hates it when we go away and gets a bit mopy. She is staying with Carly while we are gone.

Got to Carly’s around 10am, loaded everything out of the car and into the van and by around 10:30, we had said tearful good byes to Aiko, and Carly too. Why is it so hard to leave our dog! It always has been! 🙂 We both know she will be very well looked after by Carly, Kieran, Ella and Ethan, and of course her niece, Hanna.

We had a slow but smooth trip north and stopped in Port Wakefield for lunch at the “Legendary” Pie Shop up there. We arrived in Port Augusta around 3:30pm and went straight to the Big 4 caravan park for the night. There was a long queue waiting to check in, so many “Grey Nomads” out there!

After we checked in and got the van hooked up to all the services, sorted the rest of our stuff out and took a breath, we took a drive around town taking in the sights. PA is such a pretty town and has some very good public infrastructure, sports grounds, marina, parks etc. It’s amazing where you go and  what you see while you play Ingress.

Once we finished “looking” around town, Deb looked up Trip Advisor and found a good Indian Restaurant  on the south side of town for tea. The meal was good and reasonably priced. When we got back to the caravan park we found our section all in darkness, apparently according to our grumpy next door neighbour, the power had been out for quite a while. Deb had a look on the web and found that we managed to get into the only area in SA with a Black-out and they were hoping to have the power back on by 1am!!

Day 2 Port Augusta to Cadney Park Roadhouse 7 July 2016  792km

We woke around 6am and it was freezing cold. It got worse, the power was still out! Apparently it got too dangerous for the SA Power crew during the night and they were going to have a look at it when the sun came up, which wasn’t yet! I put the gas on and we both showered, apparently Deb’s was a lot colder than mine, 🙂 , had breakfast and were out of there around 7am.

We headed north up to Woomera, which was at one time, and possibly may still be the “Worlds Largest Test and Evaluation Range for the military. It covers an area of around 127,000 square KM’s (49,000 Sq Miles),or roughly the size of England or the USA state of Florida. There are about 200 permanent residents that can increase up to 6000 in busy times. It has an interesting display of old rockets and associated hardware. The museum and other building were closed. We took a drive around the site (Ingressing all the way), the town is kept very neat and tidy, in a military sort of way but it is getting old and some, if not all areas and buildings desperately need some TLC. The football oval was the best maintained thing in the town! I had planned to have an overnight stay there, thinking it would take a lot longer to see everything, but we were out of there and on the road again inside 2 hours. Who would have thought we could do a town in the same time ( maybe a tad longer) then we do museums!!

Next stop was Glendambo for fuel, and lunch. Then we decided to push on to Cadney Park Roadhouse for the night. We refuelled in Coober Pedy and drove onto Cadney Park, arriving at about 5:30pm. There is no TV, phone reception, but it did have a magnificent sunset. Deb and I both headed out to get a few pics of it before it was lost to us.

The day never got above 12 C, so it was great to hook –up to some power and get the A/C in the van cranked up. Tomorrow we drive to Erldunda in the NT to stay a night before leaving the van there and heading into Uluru for a couple of nights.

 

Day 3 Cadney Park Roadhouse to Erldunda 8 July 2016  334km

We both had a great nights sleep, the cold helps with that. We were on the road again around 8:15am and arrived in Marla, the top entrance to the Oodnadatta Track, a bit after 9am. We topped up with fuel there and headed off up the highway to Erldunda.

There has been a lot of rain up this way lately and it is all very green, and the outback tracks are VERY muddy. You should have seen some of the 4WDs that passed us! The low saltbush through northern SA has given way to low scrub, with trees up to about 3m tall. There isn’t too much roadkill but the magnificent Wedge Tailed Eagles still seem to be finding enough to eat at the sides of the road. There were plenty of them soaring around.

A source of amusement for me as we have been driving up has been additions made to the road warning signs about livestock grazing on the sides of the road. Typically these signs show a large cow and a smaller sheep, but every now and then an imaginative soul out there has added other creatures to watch out for. My favourites so far have been an Octopus and on another sign, a small man with a broom! (mmm  “White line Fever” may have set in! LOL)

We stopped at the SA / NT border for the obligatory state-line selfie, and then drove straight on to Erldunda.

Erldunda is at the turn-off to Uluru. We plan to leave the Van here, hooked up to power, for a few nights while we go into Uluru for Saturday and Sunday nights.

We are going in to see “ Field of Light – Uluru” The promo material for the installation describes it this way, “The Field of Light art installation, a global phenomenon by internationally acclaimed artist Bruce Munro, has come ‘home’ to the place that inspired it – Uluru. More than 50,000 slender stems crowned with frosted-glass spheres bloom as darkness falls over Australia’s spiritual heartland” This is a link that will tell you more about it. http://www.brucemunro.co.uk/installations/field-of-light/

We had a delightful call from Ella and Ethan this afternoon, to tell us about their school reports. It was so good to share in their joy of good reports. Very proud of both of them. We were also pleased to hear that Aiko was finally settling in at Carly’s.

Well a bus load of younger people have set up camp near us, Deb assures me that they don’t look like the “All night partying types”, but they have dinner at 5:30 and there is a pub here!!  LOL

Catch you next time, I will post another update soon.

 

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