Adelaide

November 5 - 8

It was lovely to relax at Sal and Mary's and sleep in a real bed for a change.
On Thursday we went into Adelaide city centre and visited the art gallery, which had a retrospective exhibition of John Brack's work. One of Brack's paintings has the distinction of commanding the highest price to date of an Australian painting at auction.
Unlike most artists, he was extremely articulate about his work.The quotes beside the paintings for once really explained his goals.

Sal took a break from her tasks and showed us around her workplace next door, the University of Adelaide.

Friday was a day for rest and relaxation although I went to the Central Market in the afternoon to buy provisions for dinner. It's a great undercover market and reminded me of the old Paddy's Market in Sydney in its heyday, before it was forced to move in the name of "progress" to a modern and soulless venue.

On Saturday Sal took us on a drive through the McLaren Vale wine-growing area.



One vineyard (where a recent Leonard Cohen concert was held) divided their rows of grapevines with rows of red roses.



Sal treated us to a fabulous lunch, and later took us to meet a couple of her friends on a delightful farm. We wound up at Willunga Beach before going home.







The remains of an former pier, backed by low sandstone cliffs, suggested ancient ruins to me.



By Sunday the temperature had ramped back up into the high thirties, and news stories were full of how the week to come would break a 114-year record for consecutive days of heatwave.
Sal and Mary had planned a party in the afternoon and we got to meet more of their friends. Fans, blinds and closed windows kept the worst of the heat at bay and a good time was had by all.

Auburn to Adelaide

November 4

It was still very cold, but the scenery continued to be lovely.





We stopped at Kapunda and Freeling on our way south, both featured in the soap opera "McLeod's Daughters.
Kapunda was quite attractive,



but Freeling, in spite of its large highway sign,



had been taken over by developers and was a wasteland of recently-built, cheap villas. Only the pub retained a little old-fashioned charm.



By afternoon we reached Adelaide and found our way to Cousin Sal and Mary's place.

Burra to Auburn

November 3

Overnight the cool change arrived, dropping the temperature to 10º, and instead of being hot and sweaty, we were freezing. It eventually reached 15º by early afternoon but the wind made it feel colder.
It was Melbourne Cup day. We crowded into a pub in the large town of Clare to watch the race, won by an outside chance with the appropriate name of Shocking. Later we heard on the news that the jockey was rumoured to be facing a fine for excessive whipping.
The streets around Clare were full of lovely cottages, many set up as bed-and-breakfast enterprises. The old stationmaster's cottage had a stunning garden.





From Clare we made our way to Mintaro to look at Martindale Hall, a grand but rather spare edifice which was used as the girls' school in the movie "Picnic at Hanging Rock".



I also visited Timandra, an award-winning private garden. Some of the awards were for judicious water conservation. This rose, possibly 'Dortmund', was demonstrating how drought-tolerant ramblers are.



Roses flourish in the South Australian climate and there are many gardens chock-a-block with them. Most, however, are big Hybrid Tea varieties - not my kind of rose.
Timandra had more of the species and graceful, old ramblers that I prefer. This combination was cool and refreshing on a hot day:



Auburn was another picturesque town with lovely gardens,





including a vast banksia rose,



and vigorous pelargoniums.



We stayed in their small council caravan park for the night.

Melrose to Burra

November 2

We spent the night in Melrose, a quaint little town of stone buildings and a big, airy pub. Our view from the corner of their caravan park was of a dry creek bed full of old river gums. Knotholes in these trees provided good nesting spots for birds: there were sacred kingfishers just above our van, and higher up a clutch of galahs.



The cool change prophesied did not come and we drove through the Clare Valley in more of the extreme heat we'd been experiencing all week. Gladstone, where we stopped for lunch was baking.



There was no-one on the streets; they'd all retreated into air-conditioned homes or shops.
We stopped in Burra, another quaint little town with a creek running through. If we hadn't had our own accommodation we would have stayed in these National Trust -run miners' cottages at $80 a night. Next time.

Port Augusta to Melrose

November 1

The best part of Port Augusta was its Arid Lands Botanical Garden. They had what they claim is the largest collection of Eremophila in the world, most with beautiful bell-like flowers in a variety of colours.





I was particularly impressed with their demonstration gardens showing how to use desert plants in the home garden.









It was afternoon when we left Port Augusta and wound our way through Horrocks Pass,



marvelling at the green hills and the beauty of this settled land after so much bleak desert.



Fields of wheat, hay, and alfalfa patterned the rolling hills in squares and rectangles. Windrows striped the fields in soft yellow, green and lavender like faded canvas awnings.





Although the creek beds were as dry as elsewhere, the river gums were much larger with rougher, gnarled trunks.



Some fields were full of the purple Echium which has become such a weed in this country (called Paterson's Curse in NSW but Salvation Jane here in SA). Nevertheless it's a beautiful weed.



The temperature was still in the high 30's, and there were way more flies than in the dry desert lands, but we enjoyed the variety of the landscape, its settled, prosperous look,



and the small picturesque towns through which we were now driving. We wondered if the owners of this place had chosen the bottlebrush outside because the flowers matched the colour of their roof.

Coober Pedy to Port Augusta

October 31

Further than we like to travel in a day - 537 km - but there isn't anything between these two points, except a few roadside pull-offs with a picnic table and a water tank. Part of the reason for this is that the road runs through the Woomera Prohibited Area, a vast tract of desert once used for joint Australia/USA bomb and missile tests.(woomera is an aboriginal word meaning throwing stick.
Today, the town of Woomera, slightly off our route, is a detention centre for illegal immigrants to Australia, mainly hapless Afghanis and Tamils who have been plucked from leaky boats off the northwest tip of the continent. Should they attempt an escape from detention, we can personally confirm that they would have to cross miles of trackless, arid wasteland before reaching any vestige of civilization.

Apart from the point where the road crossed the Trans-Australia Railway,



and some dramatic drifts of purple flowers on the red earth,





there was little to record en route until we reached some of the amazing salt lakes.



Lake Gairdner has been the site of several attempts on the world land speed record.



We were glad to reach Port Augusta, a major industrial town on the northerly end of Spencer Gulf.
The caravan park advertised a view of the Flinders Ranges across the water. Technically true, but they failed to mention their own chain-link, barbed-wire fence and the railway yards between us and said view. Actually, the railcars were quite colourful, and if you poked the camera through the chain-link, the view wasn't half bad.

Uluru to the SA Border

October 29

While taking my morning shower, I wondered at all the white marks on the shower curtain until I realized that I was directly underneath a wagtail's nest.



Once we left Yulara, as the resort complex beside Uluru is called, it was a day of steady driving. We crossed the border into north South Australia mid-afternoon with little fanfare, and stopped for the night at Marla roadhouse. In the roadhouse you could buy a bumper sticker saying "Where the hell is Marla?"

October 30

More of the same. If there is anywhere that you should be be to see the curvature of the earth, this is it. Flat land in all directions, pockmarked with small bushes and mulga trees.



In the afternoon we began to see assorted machinery and small sandhills in varying colours spread across the landscape.



We were approaching Coober Pedy, opal capital of the world. CP is a small, dusty township, so hot that most of the inhabitants live underground in the excavations made by earlier opal miners.



Signs everywhere warned you about the risk of falling down a mineshaft.



During our stay the daytime temp was 38ºC, and it didn't cool down much at night. A benefit was the best water we've had in a week, although you had to pay for it: showers 20 cents for 2 minutes.

We visited the Old Timers Mine which involved donning a hardhat and descending into underground caverns, some left as they were originally, some turned into a neat two-bedroom home with functioning bathroom, kitchen and office, and electric light supplemented by shafts going up to the surface.

Of course there were many shops selling opals, cut and uncut, in silver or gold settings. They were all expensive. Lucky I don't care for opals!

Our caravan park provided shade-cloth awnings over the sites. The only drawback was that you were very close to your neighbours. It was so hot that sleep was not easy, especially as open, unscreened windows let in a vast variety of flying bugs, some of which were also biting bugs.