Adelaide to Pimba

We left Adelaide on a rather grey and overcast day. Our aim was to get to a campsite 30kms north of Port Augusta. We stopped at Port Augusta for diesel and a walk around, then stopped at a lovely little country town called Crystal Brook. We had a walk around and bought some meat from the local butcher, then finally arrived at our camp spot early afternoon. We had some damp clothes to dry, as it rained quite heavily in Adelaide the night before, so we put up a clothes line on the only tree in the area! All the rest areas are quite big and flat. We got our fire pot out, and Randall went looking for firewood. At one stage I couldn't see him and it felt quite peculiar to be all alone in the middle of nowhere.  Of course, Randall found a nice chunk of firewood and he got out his chainsaw and cut it all up. We had a nice little stash of wood.

Another caravan parked near us and we got chatting. Their names were Brian and Marie, and they were from Melbourne.  They came and sat by the fire with us for a while. 2 motor homes also arrived later in the evening, so there ended up being a few of us stopped there.

Our next stop was a place called Pimba, 6kms away from Woomera. It is a huge caravan stop and the caravans roll in in the afternoon to stay the night.

We met a nice couple from Shepparton, Ray and Loretta, and ended up chatting with them in the pub. They were heading to Darwin to meet their son and we may catch up with them as we head up and they head back down.
We also chatted to Lyle from Claremont, who was 82 and sprightly, and met a rather dour Deloraine couple in the pub - they seemed very negative about everything!

We headed into Woomera in the afternoon - a very interesting town, all the more for being like a ghost town! It was Saturday afternoon, and Randall and I walked around the town and did not see one   child on a bike, no families out walking, no washing on the lines, nothing! The only people seemed to be people like us - travellers. We did see a tree with lots of boots hanging off it!

       

 

We called into the Visitor centre and museum which had some interesting history. The public was not allowed into Woomera until the 1980's.
The next day we went to Roxby Downs which is a big BHP Biliton mining town. We had a drive around, and saw that they had an airport to rival Hobart. We have a chemical toilet and went to use the dump point, only to find you have to get a key from the petrol station nearby! This must be the only place that would ever lock up their dump point!
We drove on to Andamooka which is another opal mining town and is very interesting - nothing like our towns in Tassie! We walked up Christmas Hill to get a view of the town and then had a look at some historic cottages that the opal miners lived in. We had a drink in the pub, before checking out the road to Lake Eyre. Closed. It doesn't look like we will get in to Lake Eyre. There has been a lot of rain recently and the road is apparently a mess.