Pimba to Coober Pedy

The road is now a reddish colour instead of the traditional colour. We stopped for lunch at The Twins road stop. Oh no, the flies have appeared! We got out our trusty Desert Cream that we bought from Alice Springs last time we were here.

                   

  

We put our UHF radio to channel 40 just as a VERY wide 7.5 metre load was heading towards us, with a lead car warning us to get off the road. It was a huge mining truck on the back of a huge truck. We enjoyed listening to the banter between the pilot car and the truck!

       

We arrived at Coober Pedy and headed for diesel. We learnt where the locals filled up last trip, not in the main street – turn right at the drive in. It was 10 cents a litre cheaper!

We did our washing opposite Centrelink, where you could buy 30 litres of water for 20 cents. Randall fired up the generator and we sat the washing machine in the caravan. The soap suds went down the main street. I didn’t know which way to look!! It’s sometimes hard being married to Randall!! We got 

talking to a dairy farming couple from Gippsland, who sprung us, but had a good laugh.

                               

When we had finished we headed off to our camp spot for the night.

We hoped to stay just outside of the town about 1.5km along the William Creek road. Sadly the William Creek Road was closed, so that put an end to our hopes of visiting Lake Eyre. We were both very disappointed. The man at the information centre told us that they had had 20ml of rain each day for the last 4 days and that the road was a mess. He said that Lake Eyre was full, and mostly from rainfall, not water from Queensland, which is unusual. He also said it would take up to a week to evaporate. We heard on the radio that tourists were stranded at William Creek.

We camped overnight at the site of a monument to Stuart – Randall reckoned if it was good enough for Stuart to camp here, it was ok for us! It was a bit lonely though!!

In the morning we did a bit of a checkout of the town, and discovered a great IGA store that Randall reckoned was better than Bunnings. It had a bit of everything! We did our shopping and when he went to pay Randall was asked for his Pensioner card! (I know we’re old but….)

As we left Coober Pedy we were stopped at a big Police setup for alcohol and drugs.

There are signs everywhere telling you to watch out for holes in the ground. You can see why!

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.

Melbourne to Adelaide

After a busy time in Melbourne, running around fixing problems, we felt a bit sad to leave Nikki and Shan, and Katie, Matt and little Otto. We had spent some extra days there, which we really enjoyed. 

It was hard to leave Otto, that's for sure!

       

The back window was all fixed and better than the original one!

                             

 

   

Now was the start of our next adventure. The first overnight stop was at a place called Burnt Creek, where we set up for the evening. There was another couple there, travelling in their caravan, so we called them over for 'happy hour'. 

We weren't too far off the highway, so it was a bit noisy - even far into the night the trucks roll past.

We made some yummy muffin pizzas for tea. 

                                   

Our next overnight camp was another roadside one. Permangk was the aboriginal name for it. It was more a truck stop, so it was very noisy with trucks pulling in at all hours of the night. 

Our trip into Adelaide was very misty.

      

   It is a very steep descent too, so we were glad when we arrived at our destination. 

We had booked a night in the Levi Park Caravan Park. We have stayed there before and we knew it was very nice. Once set up, we got to work doing our washing. I am so glad we purchased our own little automatic washing machine. It is worth its weight gold!!

                                

       

Once the washing was done we headed out to the shops to stock up for the road ahead. 

Food shopping between Adelaide and Alice Springs is not the greatest, so we bought quite a bit of meat and groceries. We have a vacuum sealer, so I got to work when we got back to camp getting all the meat sealed so it will last a few weeks. 

                                 

      

We took the opportunity to catch up with my sister Penelope, BIL Jame, and niece Madeleine. 

          

  

Things happen in threes!

Well, what a busy time it was in the lead up to our departure!

Firstly, Randall lost a set of Mazda keys. How, I don't know. After waiting a suitable amount of time for them to turn up, it was time to order a new set. $500 later we got a new set. The other set is nowhere to be seen. On Friday ( my last day at work) I noticed I had several missed phone calls from Randall. I sent a text to see if it was important. Yes, it was, so I rang. Well, the back window of the Mazda was broken (in about a million pieces), but not to worry, we will sort something out. I could have cried! Randall was never happy with the way the back window closed so he was doing some adjustments, which didn't go to plan!

The canopy had originally come from Thailand via TJM, so it was not going to be able to be a quick fix. (Up to 3 months)!

I got home, and after much discussion we decided that if we could get a temporary fix, we could still leave as planned. We rang Alpha Caravan and RV Centre, the people that made our caravan, and we dropped our car off at 8am on Saturday and headed off to pack. We worked so hard to get organised, and we were so glad when we got a call to say that the car was ready to pick up. What a great job it was!! We could pack the car and lock it and head off as planned. 

                                     

After a VERY hectic few days we were finally able to head up the driveway and off to the start of a wonderful holiday.
We were very happy to arrive in Melbourne and head to our daughter's place to visit Otto for some grandparent cuddles.

 

                                       

 

                                                                            

 The third thing to go wrong happened when we were setting up the caravan outside Nikki's house.

Randall was putting the jockey wheel on the caravan when the attachment pin on the handle broke. Just as well it happened in suburbia as we were able to (after some driving to auto and 4WD places, then web searching) find the exact same jockey wheel).
However, that jockey wheel problem has also fixed the canopy problem! As we we arrived outside a 4WD place, Randall notice a car with the AeroKlas logo and web address on it - the very same brand as our canopy. We nabbed  the fellow when he had finished being served and discovered that there was an AeroKlas fitting centre only 10 minutes away. And, even better news, they had the back window in stock!! (Amazing that we couldn't have been told that in Hobart!)
We have had to delay leaving Melbourne for a few extra days so that the window can be fitted, but that just means more 'Otto time' as we call it!

So we are enjoying the company of Katie and Matt and Otto and Nikki and Shannon.