On The Road to Lake Eyre – Part Three

Can you believe it?  I’m not sure I can, but we are in South Australia. Nine months overdue and a little worse for wear, but we made it.

It really was quite exciting crossing the boarder from NSW to SA. I mean the roads didn’t look that much different, but they did feel different. Maybe it was the beer we had at the Coburn pub just meters past the border. Hey…we had to celebrate!

We spent that night on a gravel pit on the side of the road. Yes, it is as exotic as it sounds. For those who don’t know, a gravel pit is a section of flattened ground, often quite big, covered with, yup you guessed it…gravel, well off the main road. The council use these areas to store gravel for road works and caravanners have adopted them for no fuss no muss overnight stays. They are level, free from red dirt, brown dirt, any colour dirt really, and are very convenient. You simply pull up at a gravel pit, lock the car, walk into your home and open a bottle of wine. As I said, no muss no fuss. And for those of you who say, “Ugh, how dreary.” These gravel pits often offer something other than comfort.

Wide open spaces!

We picked up quite a large stone chip on the driver’s side windscreen within an hour of crossing into SA. It seems the southern state doesn’t like us either. When we got in the car the following morning, that chip had grown into a ten inch crack. I guess the 0-degree overnight temp had something to do with that.

We had an uneventful drive through some lovely scenery, passed the fruit and vegie quarantine inspection with flying colours, and made it to Port Augusta by four pm. Once there we made ourselves at home at the Shoreline Caravan Park, or as I’ve taken to calling it, the Shoreline Caravan Penitentiary. We are surrounded by two metre high metal/colourbond fence, topped with another meter or so of wire fencing which is capped with barbed wire. I’m not sure if it is to keep them out, or us in. 😊

Jokes aside, it is a good park and Port Augusta seems like a lovely place. We’ve been to the info center and gotten some good intel on the roads/conditions up to Lake Eyre, and some things to see and do while we are here.

This is going to be fun!

No SA birds yet, but this cheeky little Rufus Whistler was the last I photographed in NSW.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!