DAY 162 & 163 - PORT AUGUSTA
Ian and
Kathy’s last day with us today, so we have decided to have a pretty chilled out
sort of day as they have a big week ahead of them heading back to
Queensland.
We spent
most of the morning cleaning, packing and repacking our vehicles and Steve got
our weber out so that I could bake them a cake to take on the road with them
and also something for us for morning tea…
We had a
pretty chilled out morning just sitting around and chatting about our
trip, the highlights, places we loved, places we wanted to come
back too and places we wouldn’t care if we missed next time round…. It was a lovely relaxed morning…
Around lunch
time, Ian and Kathy went for a drive to Woolworths to stock up before they hit
the road in the morning… Steve and I had decided we would stay an extra day in
Port Augusta and we could do ours then.
Instead we decided to go for a drive out to the Port Augusta Arid
Botanical Gardens, mainly to check out the cliff tops from the Matthew
Flinder’s Lookout.
The gardens
were quite busy, lots of cars around but
we didn’t see any people.
Steve had
also heard that there was good fishing out at the railway bridge so that became
our next little adventure….
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| Finding that perfect fishing spot |
Finding a track that led into the bridge. We eventually found it. You had to go out of town a bit and then it
was a pretty rough dirt track down alongside the railway line itself. He enjoys this sort of exploring and was
keen to come out the following day to drop in a line or two….
I don’t have
much faith in the fish of SA… Everywhere we go, we get told about these great
fishing spots, but no one seems to be catching too much there…
We arrived
home early afternoon, and all had a bit of a nap…
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| Ian and Kathy |
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| Steve and I |
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| Our last night and meal together |
We had
decided that we were going to go out for dinner tonight as it was our last
night together… We have done a little bit of early out on the Eyre
Peninsula. The hotel down from where we
were staying was called the “Ian’s Western Hotel” so we thought that it was
only right that for their last night with us we should eat out at an
establishment that was named after Ian…
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| We went to Ian's Western Hotel for dinner.. Seemed fitting. |
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| Garlic Prawns... another great meal for Steve |
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| Roast Lamb and vegetables for Ian.. |
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| Seafood Baskets for Kathy and I. |
Again, we
had a delicious meal, slightly more
expensive than in Cowell, but still very good value, and the meals were really
quite large.
It was a
bitter sweet evening, sad to be
departing but exciting for them to be heading home to see all their
grandchildren in time for Christmas…
What an
amazing 5 and a half months it has been,
what memories we have created together, how blessed are we to have such
good friends. It has been an absolute
privilege for me to spend this holiday with both Ian and Kathy and also John and
Barb. This is the stuff that dreams are
made of, and we have been living the dream…
it is so hard to believe that we are on the tail end of it now, as
we had been planning and looking forward
to it for three years….
Bring on 2020
when we can take off and hit the road again… time to start dreaming again…
We thought
that Ian and Kathy would be up and ready to leave around 7am on Monday morning,
but they weren’t. Kathy had been up
since the crows were awake but Ian slept in a little.. why wouldn’t you when
you have a big drive ahead of you.
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| Guiding Ian onto the caravan |
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| Hitching up ready to leave... |
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| Hooking up the car... |
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| Hatching down the roof... |
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| I'm going to miss these guys so blesses to have their friendship |
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| And they are off.... on their way home to Queensland.. |
Still it
didn’t take them long to get ready, as most of the packing and sorting had been
done the previous day, and it was just after 8am when they finally drove out of
the caravan park. It seemed a little
strange with them gone…
Steve took
off about 8.30am to head back down to the river near the railway bridge to do a
spot of fishing. Apparently, that is
where the locals go, but he didn’t come home with any fish. He was home by 10am and by 10.30 we were in
the car heading for a drive out along Shacks Road.
Life looks pretty
relaxed for the 400 or more shack owners
that live along this stretch of road, as
they sit and enjoy the soft Spencer Gulf
waves which gently lap their shore.
The smattering of
mostly simple, traditional fibro shacks has been haphazardly yet lovingly
erected either right on the shore or on dirt roads just a few streets back with
names such as Snapper Rd, Whiting Rd and Garfish Rd.
Some of these
shacks date back to the 1930s and are so close to the water’s edge that king
tides can flow through their doors.
Well-worn lounges,
and mismatched and second hand furniture sit under verandas and their yards are
often filled with all sorts of fishing gear, boats included. Some
of these shacks even had their own jetties.
There were lots
of unusual homes and everything seems to be accepted – the good, the bad and
the ugly. There are also very few
fences... they all seem to live in each other’s pockets but it seems like a
great community out there.
This road
and shacks follows the gulf south for a little over 20kms. We thought it might have been a clifftop
drive but it wasn’t, it was as the name of the road implies, lots and lots of fishing shacks all the way
down the coast.
Still it was
a pleasant drive, the water was
beautiful and on a couple of occasions we even saw some dolphins playing in the
water. A bit of a treat…
We explored
lots of the dirt roads in and out of the little bays. Sometimes they would take you directly to
someone’s shack or down to the water, but rarely did they go from one group of
shacks to the next. We checked out quite
a few jetties as well, some were in great conditions, others falling apart. It is just the sort of coastline that Steve
would love to be holidaying at. It was a good morning…
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| The Water Tower Lookout - Port Augusta |
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| Views from the Lookout. |
Heading back
into town, we thought we would visit the other two lookouts in Port
Augusta, the first one we went too was The
Water Tower Lookout. It is surrounded by
lovely gardens. This tower was built in 1882 to provide a pressure water supply
for the residents of Port Augusta West. From the balcony at the top of this
tower you had excellent views of the
town, the Spencer Gulf, the Flinders Ranges and the outback.
The other
lookout we went too gave us a good lookout over the saltpan flats of Spencer
Gulf.
Lunch time
had us heading out to the Puma Roadhouse, as the managers at the caravan park
had recommended this as a place to eat out.
The food was OK, but the blessing there was that they gave us a PUMA
Fuel Card which means that anytime we refuel with PUMA anywhere in Australia,
we get 5c a litre discount…. Bonus….
After lunch
we headed back into Port Augusta to the Visitors Information Centre which also
houses the award winning tourist attraction of the Wadlata’s “Tunnel of Time”. We tossed up whether to pay the admission
and go in, but even with a concession it would have cost us $20 each and the
lady at the desk told us that we would need a good three hours to see it all. In fact she offered to extend out ticket so
we could visit the following day. That
didn’t suit as we we were leaving first thing in the morning….
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| Wadlata's "Tunnel of Time |
As we were
now in town, we went to the post office to pick up more stamps and post some
more postcards home to our grandchildren, and then we ducked across the road to
the bank to fill our piggy bank with $1 coins for washing..
Port Augusta has quite a few good pieces of public art, so that was our next mission. To drive around town and check them all out.
They have street art, sculptures, murals and a life size bronze sculpture of the late Mayor Joy Baluch AM, plus some lovely mosaic tiles on one of the walls coming into town…
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| Skate bowl on the water front |
We were home
by 4.30pm. Steve fished out on the beach
area in front of the van for an hour or two… Still no success, not even a bite,
although we did see dolphins out there so maybe they had chased all the fish
away. It was then time to start packing
ready for our trip in the morning…
The awning
came in, tables and chairs were packed away, and the hose was even disconnected
in preparation for an early start.
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