Reaching the Ocean, almost....

Reaching the Ocean, almost.... : World Cup 2018 Russia

When you are on the Stuart Highway heading south, after Coober Pedy there is little opportunity to head anywhere other than towards Port Augusta, a small town situated on the very northern end of the Spencer Gulf, that eventually leads out to the Great Australian Bight, or as close as damn it, the Southern Ocean.  It was another 500km plus driving day to get us down to Port Augusta so we booked into the campsite for 2 nights so that we could have a rest day and explore the area.

The trip was another 5 hours of ever-changing scenery, from the long dusty plains out of Coober Pedy, through the wild outback desert, past the vast inland salt lakes and the Woomera test range, a facility that supported the British nuclear bomb testing in the 1950’s. Eventually, as we descended a number of great escarpments we arrived on an arid coastal plain of marshes and swamps at the head of the Spencer Gulf. It had been a long day at the wheel so we pitched up at a nice looking campground and settled in for the night.

With no great plans for the day, we ate a leisurely breakfast and headed into Port Augusta, on what was a warm and pleasant day. We found a good spot to park ‘Dilbert’, (no mean feat with a 7m/21 foot van) and took a wander around the small town. It had once been a great port with massive docks and several jetties but with the arrival of the train and motor car, and a bigger port further south towards Adelaide, Port Augusta was now a sleepy little town on the water’s edge.  

We had a very enjoyable couple of hours following the heritage trail, reading up on the history and sitting on the old wharf before heading to the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden for a spot of lunch, which came highly recommended. After eating we sat in the gardens enjoying the warmth of the pale winter sun and then went to the overlook to view the distant Flinders Ranges, thinking that very little had probably changed to the view since Mathew Flinders sailed up the Spence Gulf just over 200 years ago.

We jumped back in ‘Dilbert’ and went on a short adventure into the Flinders Range to a small town called Quorn, which looked like just what you would expect an Australian country town to look like from the 1800’s. We took a look at a small railway museum and then around the old buildings scattered about this small town before going into a typically Australian county hotel bar for a drink and a chat with the barman. 

He was a font of information about the town, in particular, all the films that had been made in the area, and in fact filming was about to start in the next few days for another of those Australian country drama’s that seem to pop up on NZ TV so often. We meandered our way back through the hills to Port Augusta and settled in for the evening, as we were going to have an early start the following morning as we turned East and headed towards Sydney over the next week....