Jamestown in the mid north of SA

Jamestown is where my grandmother Agnes Lillian Moore was born in 1884. Several famous people were born here (which today has a population of 1700) including R M Williams, the Both brothers who invented the iron lung during the polio epidemic as well as an early invention of the fax machine and also Sir Hubert Wilkins who was the first man to fly over both the north pole and Antarctica.

This information came to me as I was walking from my campsite in Robinson park to the cemetery and discovered there is a branch of the National museum. Being Good Friday, I knew it would be closed but had a look outside. There was a phone number to ring. I did and asked if it would be open any time over the easter weekend. Mervyn Robinson, son of the RV park creator obliged by coming down and opening up for me this morning. He was a fine host and full of local information such as directing me to my great grandparent's grave stone and how to get to Belalie where they were the first inhabitants, about 11 km south of Jamestown.

Thomas Moore married Janet Kelly 26/10/1872  and Agnes was their eighth child. Thomas took up land at Belalie in 1871. He died at their property Woodlands in 1912 and Janet died in Jamestown in 1922. Agnes moved to WA with 3 of her brothers.in 1900 to keep house for them in Pingelly which is where she met and married my grandfather and the rest is history as they say.

The museum houses other items of interest to me such as...

I learned to type on this exact model at Underwoods Business College in 1966. More modern electric typewriters were being used in offices at that time, but this is what you learned on.

This is the type of milk separator we used to turn at my aunt's farm which pinged as it turned to get the right speed to separatee the cream from the milk. The cream would later be churned into butter, if I didn't get to eat it all first. Bread, jam and thick cream is still a favourite.

Tomorrow I will go to Belalie to see if I can find any relics of perhaps the church they built on the property being a particular luny brand of Presbyterians that they needed their own church.

Still crossing the Eyre peninsula

I have driven through Kimba on the Eyre Hwy several times and only saw the silly and somewhat faded galah. Today I took a step further and drove into the town centree and what did I see?

Wow! You only see the unpainted side from the highway.

I was actually looking for a branch of the Commonwealth  bank, but after the PO  agency I was referred to the school library where I was able to use their computer to authorise a Community Garden payment. My laptop has had a nervous breakdown and the dongle can't be used on my tablet. All very friendly and successfully  transmitted. Then I saw a gov't depth sign that intrigued me.

What does this mean? Why is this depth hidden in such a place? Could it be to not attract interest?

Moving on from Kimba, I drove on to Port Augusta and shared the servo with a very big rig.

Then moving on again, drove through the majestic Horrocks pass through the Flinders Range to Wilmingtonton which is a very pretty town. They know it and refer to it as Beautiful Valley. The op shop was great.

I picked up more reading material. Outside the shop, there were mosaic murals attached to the street post.

Across the Eyre peninsula

Leaving Ceduna today after a two night stay, I drove through the little towns of Wirulla (the town with the secret and the inland jetty) and Poochera (the town with the kerosene tin humpy) that I wrote about last year and also the little town of Minnipa. The towns are really just grain silos with a few houses and mainly closed shops and businesses. At Minnipa, I saw, and used, the original Concrete Crappa.

 I then took a 10km detour to see Tcharkuldu rock which was a huge expanse of rock with big boulders balancing. Very difficult to photograph as I couldn't get in the whole vista. There were more spectacular formations with wave like features another 10 km further down the bone shaking road that I decided to miss as I had been jiggled about enough.

Tonight I am staying at a free camp called Kooma which is an abandoned farmhouse. The former occupants are now deceased but their children have opened the property to passers by complete with a key in the door so you can share their memories of the family home. It is set up as if the occupants had just stepped out for five minutes.

Made it across the Nullarbor again

At Eucla, the signpost told me that Dave lives in Perth and Andy in Adelaide. I wonder if anyone ever looked them up when they got there.

The woolshed at Penong has some great craft including some baskets made by Trina who with her friend Tracy will be walking 200 km from Penong to the Head of Bight with a group of women protesting against mining exploration the Bight. I remembered about Greenham Common.

The museum there had a telephone switchboard like the one I used in my first job at 15 with HBF.

The Penong telephonist was blind and so the list of emergency numbers on the top is in braille.

Staying in Ceduna for two nights to relax after the long drive.

Madge is on the move again!

Taking off from Perth next Friday over the Nullarbor to South Australia to check out some places that I loved when there last, then to go south to Yankalilla on the Fleurieu to see mates and then onto Canberra to pick up Tom and Alice who are flying across for the April school holidays. We will spend 5 days in Canberra and then onto Sydney for another 5 days before they fly home. I will then wend my way slowly home going wherever I feel like on the day.

Watch this space for updates and photos.

More NSW

Wilcannia Post Office which looks out of character for this outback town, but in reading the history, it was the largest inland port on the River Darling. The bridge over the river has elaborate engineering to be able to lift the bridge to allow the paddle steamers to travel the river to collect the wool clip.

Leaving Lithgow, I took a winding road across the Blue Mountains and found the Blue Mountains Botanical Garden.  This was the spectacular view from the shop balcony. 

Botanical Garden autumn colouring.

Happy Mothers' Day I thought when I saw the chrysanthemum display at the garden.

Ceduna to Dubbo part 2

I forgot yesterday to mention the granite man at Wudinna.  This is a memorial to Australian farming families.  It is a wheat growing area.

Sorry he/she is not standing upright, having a problem here.

These toilets are at Wirulla and are known as Concrete Crappers.

At Broken Hill, Jan took me out to see the Living Sculpture park.   This is about a dozen large stone carved sculptures that were done over one workshop on top of the hill. The artists are all international and only one Aussie.  Several from Tiblisi, Georgia and others from Italy, India, Africa and Mexico.

 This one obviously Mexican.

This is Jan showing her skill at Silverton, which was a huge silver mining town near Broken Hill in the 19th Century but only a few building survive and they are for the tourist trade, mostly art galleries.

 Another of the sculptures, this one done by a Georgian man and he wrote that it was to remember the Georgian horses that Stalin had killed the lot.  Been reading John le Carre's  Smiley books lately and the mention of the rivalry between those tiny nations that Russia controlled and the cruely of each against the other, not just from Stalin but supported by him as he was from Ossetia.

 This is Bell's 1950's milk bar in Broken Hill. I enjoyed a strawberry spider, albeit too sweet, to Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock.

 This art gallery at Silverton was closed, but I couldn't resist this photo.

 A yard of donkeys at Silverton.  Sorry about the sideways view.

The Silverton pub where the donkeys were blocking the door when I tried to get out. The pub has lots of memorabilia about the films made in this town including the Mad Max series.

From Silverton, we drove on to White Cliffs which is an opal mining town. This is the underground motel.  In the end we didn't stay here, it was pretty pricey but went to the $20 caravan park. Most of the houses are dug outs.  The biggest problem they have in building them is putting the water in and getting the water waste out, so they build their wet areas at the front and then dig in behind. Each room has a vent up for fresh air which is covered by a corrugated iron cover to stop rain coming in.  Incredibly well insulated as you can imaging being burrowed into the rock.

This is a dining in the motel.

I did buy some opal earrings, couldn't resist.