Category: Motorhome

We left camp at about 9.30 and made our way up to the Quorn Railway Station where the toot of a steam whistle excited our interest the coming rail journey. After getting our tickets from the cheery lady in the ticket office (we had prebooked months ago which was just as well as it is School Holidays in South Australia at the moment) we joined the approximately 200 other eager patrons to board our steam powered train. We boarded at 10 a.m. in COVID safe numbers per carriage and were finally underway at approximately 10.45 for the hour long trip out to Woolshed Flats (right next door to where we had free camped on Sunday night). There we were able to purchase home cooked sausage rolls and pasties for lunch while we waited for the locomotive to be relocated to what would now be the front of the train for our return trip to Quorn.

After returning to Quorn it was back to the vehicles for the rather short trip to the Cradock Hotel via Hammond, an historic old town consisting of a couple of old houses, a deserted general store, a derelict hotel and a rather grand, but unused, Roman Catholic Church. The scenery was quite pretty being mainly sheep pastures leading up to the foothills of the Flinders Ranges. After partaking of the obligatory drink at the hotel (a condition of camping behind the pub) we set up our camp on the wind blown gravel two acre lot of land that formed the campground on the traditional lands of the Banggarla people. The wind was victorious in the end, cutting short our normal after dinner drink of the Old Tawny by inundating us in swirls of red dust. But we live to fight another day even if our vehicles are being buffeted by 30 to 40 kmh winds

We left the Woolshed Flat camp for a brief drive into Quorn where we refuelled before having a walk around the town. Lovely old town with quite a few empty shops. We decided to have morning tea at the Quandong Cafe. Appropriately it was Quandong Jam and cream on freshly baked scones for me and Quandong slice for Jenny.

We headed to our camp at the Quorn Caravan Park run by the Martin Family apparently (but no discounts for like named people!). This was on the traditional lands of the Nukunu people. After dinner we walked up to the rail yards to view the Quorn Silo Light Show which was made up of a series of video snippets and slide shows. Entertaining but the cool weather took its toll after 45 minutes so we headed back to camp and had a warming Drambuie to finish the night off

We left camp at around 8.30 a.m. and made our way over the border to Yamba for the quarantine station compulsory stop. The SA Police were there to check to see that we had logged in with the email that had been sent to us. Two problems – we hadn’t had that much service in the morning and when we did drag everything out to check our emails there was no email from SA Police. He was a little terse with us but, hey, it wasn’t our fault that your system didn’t work. He then had to check us in manually (which would have saved us all time at the start).

From there we headed north, not stopping anywhere because apparently they had a fruit fly outbreak in the Riverland area so it was suggested that we do our shopping when we got clear of that area. We had lunch at Burra before heading across via Crystal Brook to Port Pyrie then up the coast toward Port Augusta before turning inland to head toward Hawker, stopping 18 kms south of Quorn at Woolshed Flats Free Camp on the traditional lands of the Ngadjuri and Nukunu people. We had a great fire and a great night sitting out in mild temperatures before heading to bed a bit later than normal.

Oh dear, what a cold start to the morning. Minus 4º, so cold our diesel stove stopped working and I had to cook breakfast outside. I can honestly say that I have never felt so cold. My fingers went beyond painful to white and numb so I had to use the old timer’s trick of shoving them under my armpits against the skin to warm them back up. We turned the motor on to warm up the inside but it took easily 45 minutes to actually get enough heat in the vehicle to defrost the windscreen.

We took off from camp and we had ice particles like snow coming of Turtle and sprinkling our windscreen. A glorious day of bright sunshine a verdant pastures. We stopped for lunch at Lake Tyrell, our first ever visit to that place.We spent an hour enjoying the sunshine and the views.

We pushed on to Lock 9 on the traditional lands of the Latje Latje people. We set up camp in an area that is normally teeming with travellers but we only saw one other vehicle come into the area. All day we met travellers going the other way but very few travelling our way. We had a great night around the campfire.

We left Leongatha at about 1 p.m. and travelled through the city to Happy Jack Campground at Lockwood South, on the traditional lands of the Djadjawurung people. We had a pretty good run through the city, traffic was light, so we arrived at Lockwood South at around 4.30 p.m. and set up camp. We got the fire going almost straight away because the air was cold. By the time we had dinner and a couple of drinks the cold had well and truly moved in so we went inside at around 7.30 p.m.