Kimba to Adelaide
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The night sky was clear but the lights from the campground prevented a truly dramatic star viewing. But we could see the Milky Way reasonably clearly and can now spot the Southern Cross without much trouble.
The goal today was to get past Adelaide to Cape Jervis and be ready to catch the ferry to Kangaroo Island. Kangaroo Island is supposed to be a spectacular nature preserve since it’s basically uninhabited and has had no development. We’re pushing our luck since it’s a popular spot and reservations are generally required.
But first, the Big Galah. The Big Galah is a giant statue of a Pink Galah, the pink and grey bird we’ve been photographing. It’s the first real example of kitsch we’ve run across. Could use a paint job. But it’s big and it drew us to the gift shop it stands in front of, which is of course its prime directive. We went in and shopped for locally crafted jewelry from locally mined rocks and minerals. It’s fairly low end stuff but we each found a little something to bring home.
We actually got out of town at a reasonable hour and hit the road. More farmland and long vistas and really not much new to report for awhile.
After a bit, we came to Iron Knob. The birthplace of the Australian steel industry if the signs are to be believed. In what couldn’t have been a too difficult process, the Australians discovered that the large hill in the middle of an otherwise open plain, was made up primarily of iron ore and they started digging. They had an example of one of the large shovels they used for digging. It was labeled “Marion”. (It was actually the Number 7 Marion electric shovel.) It made me think of home and my lovely, kind, understanding, faithful wife of the same name.
We took a little jaunt through the “town” of Iron Knob but there wasn’t much to see. Seems like all the iron ore has been taken out of Iron Knob and the few people left are scratching out a living in some other way. We did actually find a few pieces of iron. Les handed me a softball sized piece of rock and it weighed a ton!
Back on the road. A short time later, Les spotted some ‘roos lounging under a bush. We came back around to try to photograph them. Didn’t get them with the digital but did with the telephoto. But on the way back, we came across a HUGE bird having a little snack on a dead kangaroo carcass. It was the size of a Golden Eagle. Not sure what it was but don’t want it coming towards me anytime soon. A short time later, we came upon 3 emus. This little stretch was a smorgasbord of wildlife. Not long after we came upon a stretch of road with 4 or 5 kangaroo road kills. I said, it looks like a mob hit. See that’s funny because a group of kangaroos is called a mob, and they were all dead in the same place, … oh, never mind.
Towards Port Augusta we started seeing mountains. Not Rocky Mountain mountains but respectable. These are the Flinders Range and look like they might be interesting. But we didn’t have time to investigate. We went straight through Port Augusta and made the turn south for Adelaide along the Gulf of St. Vincent.
We had been passing old stone buildings marked as historic sites for most of the trip. They mostly consisted of a pile of rubble and a wall or two and were usually an old school, telegraph station or something like that. We haven’t been stopping at them. But we wanted to be sure we got a picture of at least one, so when we saw one on the road, we stopped. Les went to investigate and I took the opportunity to call home. It was a nice little spot except for one problem. It was swarming with flies. We’ve been fighting these suckers for some time but this was exponentially worse. They go right for your eyes, ears and nose. Nasty. After 10 minutes or so, they forced Les back to the car and we headed on.
Outside of Adelaide we spotted a dry lake bed (Salt Lake) and an interesting piece of local humor in the form of a tire-based lake monster. That caused us to stop and once stopped, we went to walk around on it. It was covered in a thick coating of salt crystal, like the salt that had covered the cow skull at the Wool Shed yesterday. You could walk on it it was so thick.
We got into Adelaide about 4:00 (only to discover it was actually 4:45 — the time had changed). We located an Internet hotspot at the Adelaide Hilton and settled in for some e-mail and log uploading. We also took the opportunity to look up Kangaroo Island and figure out the logistics. It looked a bit tricky. There was phone number so I gave them a call. Not unexpectedly, the ferry tomorrow morning was full. So we were left with two options. First, go on the ferry without the van and take a scheduled bus tour. But the bus tour available was not the “good” one. It was the auxiliary one. Second choice, take the 4pm ferry, spend the night out there and come back the next day at 5:30pm. At the cost of a day.
We thought about it awhile and we both came to the same conclusion. We were both pretty tired from all the driving. We had made an extra effort to get here to see Kangaroo Island so why do it halfway. We’d have to give up a day in Sydney and possibly push the driving to Cairns but this was supposed to be world-class. So we put our faith in the tourist bureau and chose option two.
At that point, there wasn’t much reason to keep driving. And since we were in the middle of a major town, there weren’t caravan parks around. So we decided to get a motel, get a decent night’s sleep, sleep late in the morning and wander around Adelaide a bit. Then take an easy saunter down to Cape Jervis by 3pm and catch the ferry.
So we’ve now had an actual meal in a restaurant. The first one of the trip actually. And a decent room on the edge of town. We did about 550 km today, crossing the 5000 km total, and we’re looking forward to an easy day tomorrow.
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