On to Adelaide

The view from the look out was not as spectacular in the morning  as it was last night.  It was still a lovely view of the rolling hills, and the Spencer Gulf, but the sunset last night was amazing.

We wended our way slowly south, passing through the town of Laura, the home of CJ Dennis for much of his life, (CJ Dennis is a famous Australian poet.  He wrote 'the sentimental bloke' among other things), as well as the home of the Golden North ice cream factory.

The whole countryside was rolling hills of brown wheat or barley stubble, or brown grass for sheep to graze on.  I'm surprised at how few trees there are, it looks very bare in some places.

 

We regularly passed six-packs of silos, some tall and skinny, and a few pairs of short and fat ones.  All white, and standing out amongst the brown fields. 

The towns are full of old stone buildings, neglected in some instances with no roof  or boarded up windows and doors, and some others just very old.  Some of the towns are picturesque, but some just look dusty and tired, and you wonder why anyone is still there.  South Australia is the driest state in Australia.

We passed a whole pile of foxes strung on a fence.  I think the feral foxes are a big pest down here.

We stopped at Snowtown (named after someone's secretary) for lunch.  We were right beside the train tracks and saw a few long trains go past.  Grant and Dominic looked at the display of one blade from a wind generator.  It was huge, about 42 metres long. (Grant – I was really impressed with how big these things are.  I did some quick maths with everyone that showed that the tip of the blade would travel at 265 km/hour in a 43 km/hr wind.  No wonder they are so noisy!  For those interested, the diameter of the area the blades swing is 88 meters.  They generate 2 MegaWatts of power in winds above 43km/hr and they keep the speed down to 16 revolutions per minute by rotating the blades.  They shut down at wind speeds above 90km/hr.)

We passed the turnoff to Dublin.  Thought that was in Ireland!

Port Wakefield was the gateway to the Yorke peninsula.  It had five petrol stations right next to each other, and that was the whole town!  However we are not going down the Yorke peninsula so we kept driving south.

Coming into Adelaide we passed so many old stone houses, and old buildings.  We navigated our way through traffic and down narrow streets and twisty round-a-bouts.  The old houses are lovely.

We arrived at the caravan park in Windsor Gardens around four o'clock.  Straight away we washed three loads of washing and they were dry by 9pm.  We all had a shower, bliss, and flushing toilets!  Oh it's lovely.

We're right beside a very narrow part of the Torrens, the river that runs through Adelaide.  We could (but we didn't) walk the 7km into town along the bike track.  The caravan park is lovely and quiet, but when I went out for groceries there were quite a few cruising young guys in hotted up cars. (Ross told us that the crime rate was very high in the area over 10 years ago when he worked as a policeman.  Glad we learnt about that later – Grant)

Dominic, Nadine and Oskar had a great time playing on the grass behind the caravan, it's been a long time since they saw any that was worth rolling on.

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Vicki