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.

Ceduna to Dubbo, a long way

We came to a tiny town called Wirulla where the beconning signs read "Wirulla, town with a secret".  I went into the General Store (the only open door) and asked, what  is the secret? The answer came back..."I can't tell you, it's a secret". She did however suggest that we check out the town jetty a little way down the street.  Puzzled as it is an inland town, we found that a former CEO of the council and his mate had debated what the difference was between Wirulla and the coastal towns and decided that the coastal towns had a jetty, so they set about building one.

The next town along was Pochera where Peter had built a humpy from flattened kerosene tins and lived in it happily for many years before dying at the age of 84.

The next photo is of a silly galah, at the town of Kimba whose claim to fame is that it is half way across Australia. It doesn't want me to, and frankly, I don't blame it.  Will try again later.

We then travelled on to Port Augusta where we were to collect mail from the CMCA to change the Willie wagtail's bank account at their request.  Unfortunately they only told us days before our departure and all the signature holders on the account were us.  Despite best endeavours, the mail was not there to be collected so after Jan and I stamped our feet and said a few blue words we ignored it and drove on.  At this point we departed from Chris and Dianne who were heading into Victoria.  Jan and I drove on through the Lower Flinders Ranges to Peterborough and eventually Broken Hill.  At Peterborough after a wander around town, it was discovered that one of my tyres was quite flat and we were able to have a puncture repaired in town before moving on.  A nail had embedded in the tyre.  Fortunately it was noticed there and I didn't have to change it myself on the road. I am having problems uploading photos again so will close this post and start another.