27th April - 3 May

Monday 27th

Rain again ... We did manage to do a few things in between the rain and the sun - what weird weather! It can be raining one minute and lieterally sunshine the next and then rain again within minute and so on and so on - very frustrating!

The caravan park we are staying at is Rangeview as I found out and it has a lovely view of the Southern Flinders Ranges.

Tuesday 28th

We packed up and left in the morning. The weather is a little better today. We drove into Port Pirie for some more shopping, had some lunch and then headed for Crystal Brook which is a lovely quiet little town only about 15 minutes from Port Pirie. We wandered around the shops and used their free BBQ for dinner.

Wednesday 29th

We headed to Gladstone this morning to check out the Old Gladstone Gaol. Gladstone is another lovely little town. The Old Gladstone Gaol was definitely worth checking out. It's $6 each and you get a guided tour. They are still in the process of restoring it but it is still great. You can also sleep there - it's kinda like a motel - only different!

We then headed through Laura (another lovely town) and ended up in Wirrabara - another lovely town! We have been through so many lovely little towns lately - it's just great! They all have lovely, warm people and a great atmosphere, unfortunately the other thing they all seem to have in common is that they are all struggling to survive. In all of these towns many of their shops have closed down and there are only a few shops left open - I really hope they all manage to survie because it would be terrible to lose them.

We camped on the side of the road in a paddock opposite the information centre.

Thursday 30th

This is such a lovely campsite, beautiful green paddock with hills in the background and an excellent park with great facilities right next door.

We headed off to Wirrabara State Forest for the day to have a look around - what a fantastic day we had! The forest itself is the usual forest, but it has this old nursery that is just fascinating, we spent ages wandering around looking at all the different trees that they grew there back in the 1890s that are now giants. They are all labelled and there are heaps of different trees including fig (tried fruit off that was okay), olive (ewwwwwww!!), there were a gazillion types of pine trees, a cork tree, but my favourite was the lemon-scented gums, they had beautiful, smooth pink trunks and the leaves when you crush them smell just delicious!!

After the nursery we headed off to the "King Tree" which is a giant River Red Gum about 400 years old and it's just HUGE!!

We then dedided we were going to head towards Peterborough but on the way saw a few things of interest so we took a detour and went to Magnetic Hill, which is a hill where you stop your care and turn off the engine and it rolls uphill (bit of a farce, it looks like it is uphill but according to our level on the caravan it was actually downhill), but it was fun anyway - can say we have done it now!

Then we headed for Dawson which is a Ghost town north of Peterborough. It was a lovely drive on really good dirt roads. When we got there it was also a bit of a farce because there are still a couple of people living there and only one building that you can actually explore because the rest are locked up (all two of them), but again, it was a fun drive and fun exploring the old tavern so all in all it was a good day.

Friday 1 May

We stayed at a rest stop just outside of Peterborough overnight and went into Peterborough for a look around. It is an awesome town! There are four entrances to the town and each one has a large-scale model train next to the road that was made by a local guy. There is a locomotive engine, a cannon, the information centre was made out of an old railway carriage, museums, etc, etc. It was really intesting to walk around and look at the town. We then decided to go an check out "Meldenfield" which is a place where they make miniature scale models of mostly coaches and carriages from the olden days before cars. When we first went in there I thought it was a great place and was fascinated by all of the models they had made and the detail and trouble they go to to make them exact replicas as well as use the same methods - I thought that was well worth our $3 each entry fee. But then they took us out the back - I was blown away!! This guy, Eldon has been building a replica of the old Peterborough Railway Station for the past 20 months. It is (I think) a 1/12 th replica made using original bricks from the original station cut up excatly to scale, wooden pillars/pillars using the original wood, lanterns, etc, etc. The detail was incredible and it is just amazing the trouble he has gone to!! Very impressive!!

After that we started heading towards Burra and stopped in at "Lancelot" which is more what we would class a "ghost town". It was awesome! The story goes that it was a town that was supposed to be where the junction of all the railway lines were meant to meet. However Peterborough developed and Lancelot died as a result of it. We aren't sure how long ago it was abandoned, but we did find old newspapers dating back to 1959. There are heaps of old buildings, most of which have started to fall down but one of which (we believe it was the old tavern/accommodation) is mostly still standing. We spent ages looking around and had a fab time.

We then called in at Trewoie which is almost a ghost town. It used to be a thriving town and it has some fantastic buildings but due to a change in the railway structure it has almost died.

We ended up in Mt Bryan at a rest stop overnight. What a great day!

Saturday 2 May

We moved on to Burra because we heard there was an antique fair going on so we thought we would check it out. Burra has some beautiful buildings and they have kept them restored wonderfully. We turned up pretty early and there weren't many people around but by about 10 am there were people everywhere!! We couldn't believe how many people were there - where did they all come from? In this part of the world you can drive for 100 kms and not see another car and only the odd house but these people just came out of the woodwork! We had a great day and then decided to head for Lyrup to catch up with mum and dad. We were originally going to go from Peterborough to Broken Hill, but when we looked on the map there is basically nothing to see in between them and mum and dad are going via the Darling (they are heading up to Cameron Corner) so we thought we might tag along. We didn't tell them we were coming - thought we might surprise them but they surprised us because they weren't at Lyrup - they were further up river near Loxton. Never mind, we are camped on a sandbar near Loxton and they will have to drive past us in a couple of days' time - that will surprise them!

Sunday 3 May

Where we camped overnight at Thiele's sandbar was a little too sandy for us so we decided to try and find somwehere else to stay. We ended up finding a nice spot further up the river and pulled up there instead. We went for a swim because we hadn't had a shower for a few days. It was rather cold but it was nice to be clean! Had a great campfire and cooked curried sausages.