Fine, Clear, Hot
THURSDAY
We packed up and did a couple of side trips in Lincoln National Park before arriving in Port Lincoln.
A couple of Western Grey Kangaroos grazing on the cliff top.
The cliff views are starting to look all the same. I think it’s time to head inland.
On the way out, we came across another well. This one was put in by the sheep farmers and was put in the the sheep station. It was very deep (it had a cover over it). I even got a torch and could not see down it.
We arrived in the park around lunch time and set up. All the sites have a view of the ocean. Our site had a large tree shading it from lunch time onwards, so we were able to put up the trailer in the shade. We headed down town and dropped the car into the repair centre later in the afternoon and worked the 5 or so kms back to the caravan park. It was a hot day, so it was a hot walk home.
FRIDAY We took the opportunity to get a much cleaning and clearing done while we were in the park. It was great to give our cotton and woollen blankets a wash. The entire seven months the woollen blanket has rarely not been used of a night – we find that totally amazing, but then we had no summer at Augusta. Once everything was dry and packed away we walked to town along the scenic pathway beside the water. The pathway goes right through the large wharf area which is amazing. You have to follow the yellow foot steps to guide you safely through a working bulk handling terminal. Our first port of call was the Tasman Hotel for a cider to cool off. We then headed off to do some shopping and bought new carry on bags. Our old ones were past it and for our current trip we bought some $5 ones to carry our day to day clothes around and after 7 months they have served their purpose so we have replaced them. Around 4pm we headed off to pick up the car, had an early dinner in town and shopped for the next weeks adventure in the Gawler Ranges.
Spending quite a bit of time within the park on Friday, we made some observations. We had been told of this condition, but actually got to witness ourselves.
NewVan Syndrome: Affected are middle aged males. Locations Found – Caravan Parks - Regularity – Daily. They proceed to wipe over every inch of the new van even using telescopic ladders. This is always in full view of other residents. Variations: This syndrome is never seen in the home territory and is only displayed in public. Cause: Pride and Boredom and empty hip pocket. Can be found in groups – three were seen at Port Lincoln Caravan Park. Camper Trailer owners do not suffer from this syndrome as they are enveloped in dirt and know when they are beaten.
SATURDAY - Today’s forecast is 42C – which is hot – so we made sure that we did a early pack up before the heat hit. We left the caravan park at 9am and headed off to Koppio.
Orange – this is how we came down from Squeaky Bay area.
Purple – our trip up Coffin Bay NP
Yellow – our trip down to Lincoln NP – Memory Cove
Green – our trip up to Gawler Ranges.
The forecast Saturday and Sunday 42C – and then cooler through the week, so we took the opportunity to drive up to Gawler on Saturday – spending that 42C in the car and in air conditioning and sit out the 42C on Sunday, as it was going to be 42C everywhere on the Eyre Peninsula, so we halved it and also got a window to visit Gawler Ranges.
We visited the Koppio Museum on our way and it has to simply be the very best rural museum that I have ever seen. The guide for the day was Tom and he was very personable, friendly, full of stories. The museum is immaculate and beautifully displayed. They have a lovely large air conditioned room for tea coffee soup and very reasonable at $3 a cup. Even more important on a very hot day is that they sell ice creams – so we bought one after walking around in the heat. We were able to park our car in full shade which was a bonus. We spent about hour and half – shorter than I would have liked but it was hot and we had a long way to travel. What is 42C like – without humidity – you don’t perspire, it’s like opening an oven door. Uncomfortable – no I wouldn’t say that – it’s just HOT. I now see why people die in that heat, you don’t realize how quickly you dehydrate. You would think you would feel thirsty, but I didn’t - I am my own worst enemy and had to make myself drink. We were drinking heaps of water and there no toilet stops. The heat does make you sleepy and we stopped a few times to drink, freshen up and stay alert.
The store is the museum office, shop and entry fee area. I bought a nice little notebook and Tom gave me a quality gold pen as a souvenir.
The kitchen inside the pioneer house. The pioneer house above was moved and reconstructed here. It has small tree trunks filled in with mud and high roof with She Oak thatching. It was a surprise to walk into the cool of the house as the walls were not thick.
Above on the right is the tea room The smallest Bank and Post Office
Inside the tiny post office with it sorting pigeon holes.
Below is inside the bank with some typewriters on display as well.
Above right – boiled pudding dish. – I hadn’t seen one of these before – in another building there was a smaller one.
It is for making things like steak & kidney pudding, or plum pudding or spotted dick – all those yummy things of yesteryear.
If, I had time, I would have spent the entire afternoon reading all the old magazines and taking photos of interesting recipes. I will be trying this one out at home – it’s included for all the ginger lovers. I think I would also add small pieces of stem ginger in the mix.
A bit out of focus – it was behind glass.
A trip down memory lane – the egg cups we used to get at Easter with our eggs.
The Print Shop
Glen sad it gave him nightmares. The way it was done all those years ago. They had just set up a linotype machine – Glen was careful not to mention his knowledge of such things.
I remember the days of no indicators or seat belts and having to use hand signals.
The collection was endless and as I said before immaculate. They had 32 tractors !
Now the display which was the most amazing of all. Who would have thought that there a so many patented designs of barbed wire and even more who would consider collecting them. I glad they did – it was mind blowing.
There were a few single boards of special category wire, however the above 4 panel boards and there were about 4 or 5 of these sets of 4 panels back to back with another 4 panels of barbed wire. There were also displays of razor wires. Every conceivable fencing equipment tool you could imagine.
This was a very big room and there wasn’t a spare bit of space available. I never imagined that there would be so many varieties. I will certainly look a little closer at the fencing during our travels in future to see if they are indeed different types out there. We see a lot of very old fencing, I just always thought it was the two to the back and one to the front design on every fence.
We then headed off to the Gawler Ranges. We stopped at Cummins for lunch. The air was so hot, it dried out the wraps before I even managed to get the second layer on salad on them. We then headed north again and refuelled at Kyancutta. We had travelled 200 kms, so filled up to have sufficient fuel to travel around the ranges and get out to the next fuel. Gawler is a driving park and there are no formed walks.
Cairn with the date that John Eyre passed through the area. He climbed Mt Allalone for a view of the area. It is named aptly as it is all alone surrounded by the plains.
We didn’t use a main entrance to the park coming up from Pygery. Nothing was sign posted and we were using our own maps to navigate. It was the quickest route to our planned camp ground of Mattera. Mattera has nice level sites and some larger shade trees than the mallee in the rest of the park. There are no facilities at all – it is bush camping. We are here in the most extreme part of the year. We saw a couple of western grey kangaroos on our way in. Gawler Ranges NP was established in 2002 from Paney Station.
We are here at last - :) There is nothing like outback Australia – my favourite place. Just love all the desert colours, everything has so much more clarity – the greens are greener and the reds are redder.
I always take a photo of the park maps and especially the walk maps, so if we are in doubt as to where we are, we have this to fall back on. We are going to do two of the driving loops around the park on different days and go back down to Minnipa to refuel so we can head north, across and down to Woomera.
Our map of our proposed route out of Gawler – we will go to Port Augusta via Woomera as it is not on our north route from Adelaide.
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We are at our turn off to camp.
A late storm was threatening, but we only received a couple of spots of rain.
Photos taken early this morning 21st - Camp Mattera.
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