TUESDAY, APRIL 29

Up bright and early this morning (5:15 a.m.) to go to the airport. When John went out to bring the car around to load it, he discovered it was covered in frost! Guess they really do get some cold weather here. Once we were on the way, we discovered a second interesting fact – it was foggy (but mostly in the higher areas and not when we went down into valleys). I was hoping to see some wildlife on the drive but we didn’t spot anything.

We got to the outskirts of Melbourne about 7 a.m. and it took another 40 minutes to get to the airport (about 18 km). Returning the rental car was really easy (just a side note – we put 2850 km on it in the 10 days we had it) and we headed to the domestic terminal – I should have listened to Karen (my sister for those who don’t know) when she told me that just because you’re flying within Australia doesn’t mean it will be from the domestic terminal. We discovered that our flight to Adelaide from Melbourne was on an international flight that was heading to Singapore. So back we went to the International terminal, only to find that the lineup for the check-in was enormous. It did move fairly quickly however – it was good that we got to the terminal so early, although since there were only about 50 people on the entire plane – and 7 flight attendants, we wouldn’t have been bumped off because we were late. We got good service *lol*

The Maui rental place wasn’t too far from the airport and soon we were on the road in

our home for the next week. It was good to have had the experience driving on the left side in a small car – made the transition a little easier when we got the van. It’s bigger than I expected and has lots of storage space. John says that the van is about 1/2 again as long as a Dodge extended van. The drive out of Adelaide was made smoothly, thanks to some really good instructions from the fellow at the Maui rentals.

We headed for the Clare Valley. There are a lot of wineries in the valley, but we were looking for the Sevenhill Cellars – a winery established by Jesuits in 1851. It was as beautiful as the photos I had seen on the internet. They also had a museum of old wine making equipment and and underground cellar which was open for viewing.

John wanted to buy this wine keg (in case you can’t read the sign on it – it’s 500 gallons) but it didn’t fit in the van.

Unfortunately, we didn’t really enjoy most of the wines – but there was one that we really liked so we bought a bottle for on the road. We thought about staying in Clare, but it was only about 3 p.m. and we thought we could go a little further. We made it as far as Port Pirie and finally found a grocery store. It wasn’t very well stocked but we did manage to get most of what we needed (we got the last 1 litre jug of 2% milk!) – we’ll stop in Port Augusta tomorrow to try to get the rest. When we came out of the store, it was already dark (at 6 p.m.) and we still needed to find a campsite. We found the Port Pirie Caravan Park without too much problem. The campgrounds in Australia are pretty neat – most of them have rental cabins as well as spaces for vans or just for tent camping. Cost to camp for the night (no power hookup) was $25. Not sure what the cost of the cabins are, but it seems like it would be a more inexpensive way to travel (with a small car that gets good mileage.) The van has a 75 litre fuel tank and it takes diesel which is approximately $1.67 litre.

The road speeds here are something else – the posted speed on a fairly narrow, rough twisty road was 110 – we probably wouldn’t be allowed to do more than 60 on it at home. Driving the van was challenging for John as he could barely get to the speed limit *g* but he did manage to pass a few vehicles.

Only saw one animal on the road (that was alive, that is) – it was a large stag. He came running across the field just in time to leap across the road a short ways in front of the van.

Off to Coober Pedy tomorrow – about a 7 hour drive. We’ll probably get a fairly early start as it’s been a tiring day and we’re going to bed early.

Temperature: 18 to 20 C (after reaching Adelaide – it was bloody cold this morning in Ballarat) – sunny

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30

Even with going to bed at about 8:30, we slept until 6:30 this morning – waking up in the night to the sound of heavy rain and wind. When we got up, it was “misting” but wasn’t windy anymore. We discovered that our campsite was right beside a river, and that there was an iron smelter across the river. The only other thing to see was a grove of mangrove trees along the banks.

The bedding supplied by the rental company is interesting – there is a bottom sheet and a duvet plus two pillows. We found it a little cool – so when we got to Port Augusta this morning, we bought a polar fleece blanket as well as the rest of the supplies we had forgotten. We also made a stop at the information centre which was located at the Wadlata Outback Centre. It was interesting to see the history of the outback – including a short film on when the continent was mostly submerged under the ocean. We didn’t stay at the exhibit for too long as it was going to be a long drive to Coober Pedy (pronounced Pee-dee) and we wanted to get into a campsite before dark.

Just outside Port Augusta, the terrain started to change – you could see more red earth and fewer trees. Soon you could see for miles – the photos don’t do justice to the openness of the countryside. We saw

emus

numerous times during today’s travel. The first ones we saw were inside a fence so we wondered if they were being farmed but then we saw lots more on the side of the road with nothing around. We also saw some very large eagles – including one who absolutely refused to move off the road (he was guarding some roadkill) and we had to go around him. Luckily, there isn’t much traffic on the roads but some of the trucks are huge, like this

road train.
There were a lot of those on the road.

There wasn’t time to go to the Flinders Ranges but we could see them in the distance. We also saw quite a few salt flats – and one lake that had some water but was mostly salt flats too.

We got to Coober Pedy at about 4:30 p.m. and found the Oasis Tourist Park. The cost for a powered campsite was $22.50 and they have wireless internet access. Showers cost 20 cents for a 2 1/2 minute shower and the woman at the reception desk says that Coober Pedy has wonderful drinking water. We haven’t tested it yet but will before we leave – if it really is good, then we’ll refill all the water jugs we have with us.

They have a cute swimming pool – that we didn’t use.

We did go for a walk into the main town area and checked out the price of diesel – at one station it was $1.77 litre and at another it was $1.73 litre. There were some mosquitoes and small flies – but not enough to resort to buying nets for our heads (yet!). We toured the Desert Cave underground gallery – basically a small museum of the history of opal mining and we saw this:

in town. Settle a discussion please – was it from Mad Max or one of the Star Wars movies?

We also found this water refilling station – for 20 cents you can get 30 litres of water – not bad for a town in the desert.

Tomorrow we have a tour of Coober Pedy booked – and then I think we’re off again.

Temperature: 20 to 23 C – overcast with some big fat drops of rain – usually no more than 100 at a time – how do things survive with that little amount of rainfall?