We were out of the caravan park nice and early this morning. We all met at the welcome sign to town to retake the photo as a three-ship, as Jase and Sue have joined us since we arrived. The drive out of town was interesting with the landscape littered with Mullock heaps from the Opal mining. That was probably the most interesting part of our almost 500km of travel today… We crossed the border into the Northen Territory just after…
It was a lovely sunrise this morning. Bob and I drove up to the 360 degree lookout but missed the best of it. We saw Karen riding her bike away when we arrived – she was there for the colour. We all went on a tour of the Old Timer Mine which was a active opal mine in the early 1900’s. It also included an old dugout house which has been interconnected with the mine which was occupied until the…
We started today back at the William Creek Hotel where we paid our ‘fine’ to the RFDS and signed the wall/ceiling. Karen and Kieran found their friend’s business card and decided to sign next to it… Next event was our flight over Lake Eyre North. Great commentary and such interesting info on how the floods affect the surface of the lake. Interestingly all water from the lake is lost through evaporation – none soaks in to the ground. Photos don’t…
Today was a massive day! We only travelled 250km, but it was all on gravel of varying quality and there was so much to see! We started by heading back to Marree and topped up fuel and water supplies. Along the way we discovered that after my maintenance on the car aerial 2 days ago, the tools were left on the bullbar and had proceeded to distribute themselves along the bumpy road after we left. Karen and Kieran announced they’d…
Today was a much warmer day, and I’m not going to lie, the flies were horrendous! I really hope this won’t be the start of us being embedded in flyville for the next 3.5 months… We all did our own thing this morning with bike rides, runs and walks and had an overall very relaxing day. Karen and Kieran went out to the hot spring for sunrise and the mist on the water was beautiful. Hammocks were laid in and…
A very big and very welcome change of pace today. There were no alarms to get us up and we had a relaxed morning with a cooked brekky and plenty of time for the maintenance tasks that have built up over the last week or so. Karen updated her trip diary, Bob fixed the 12V power in the car after I pushed the travel charging power station to it’s limit yesterday… I fixed the 2 way radio aerial that has…
Today was another travel day. We had a casual 320km drive stopping at any sight seeing opportunities and any little towns we passed through. First stop was The Great Wall of China – a ridge that resembles the real wall, followed by Blinman where the boys grabbed a coffee. We then drove through Parachilna Gorge and departed the Flinders. We called in to Leigh Creek which is a town built to support the mines feeding the power stations that no…
Wow! What a day… We were up and out of camp by 730 this morning, heading for a full day of 4WDing at Skytrek on the Willow Springs Station. We (Bob and I) were keen to try but also a little apprehensive as we’ve never really done any real off road driving before. Karen and (especially) Kieran were up for it the second the option was mentioned. We were off on the 80km circuit just after 8am, and the early…
Another very chilly start this morning. Karen and Kieran had some maintenance on their car drawers so Bob and I set off on our planned hike as we expected to be much slower than them. Bob’s leg is continuing to behave and we did quite a bit of climbing on today’s walk which is very comforting. After an unfortunate incident where I managed to drop my phone off the bridge we were crossing and it settled at the bottom of…
The light and sound show last night was really interesting. We rode our bikes the 1.5km to save unhitching the cars from the vans, but man it was cold! The show didn’t start until 845pm so it was a late ride home afterwards. In recently developing news, we are very excited that Jason and Sue are going to be joining us for some of the trip. They are currently part way around their lap and are planning to converge with…