Category: 2021 Road Trip

We left Copley Caravan Park after purchasing some of their Quandong pies and headed into Leigh Creek to refuel and do a minor shop at the supermarket. Leigh Creek is gradually becoming a ghost town now that the open cut coal mine has closed, a victim of higher extraction costs and cheap renewable energy.

We continued down the highway and stopped for a cuppa at Parachilna in the hope that we would get mobile phone service. While we could access the internet and our messages, we couldn’t make any voice calls so we moved onto Hawker for lunch where we were able to get full service.

I need to replace my lefthand side wiper blade so we refuelled again at Port Augusta and tried to purchase the parts but as Port Augusta has had its first decent rains in three years there is a shortage of wiper blades in the town so we’re left wanting. The wind has come up again very strong from the west so we had to hunt down a campsite that at least had some semblance of shelter and we settled on Maslin Rest Stop which extends some way off the road and formed our “L” shaped setup to at least make the stop bearable. Quite mild, 17º and not much rain here.

We had an unplanned trip into Leigh Creek before heading south to Parachilna. the lack of mobile phone service here and about is really restricting our flow of information. Leigh Creek was flooded with Victorians returning from The Big Bash at Birdsville. South Australia was requiring them to have COVID tests and isolate upon entering SA.

We arrived at Parachilna in time for our 1.30 p.m. sitting and we enjoyed Goat Curry. Jen had the Quandong and Quince Steam Pudding, while I had the Sticky Date Pudding. We had a couple of drinks before returning to Copley, fighting against a very strong Westerly wind. The news about the deteriorating COVID situation has lead us to reconsider our plans. At this stage we intend to head back south to Port Augusta before turning north and heading up the Stuart Highway, probably aiming for Glendambo. At this stage the WA border is closed but we can still get into NT (at least we think we can) We will have to review the situation when we get access to more telephone service (probably lunchtime at Port Augusta)

The wind has really picked up tonight. The forecast was for severe weather further south so I expect we’re copping the edge of it in the form of very strong winds with intermittent showers. The only good thing about being in this park is the fact that there are no trees to blow down on us – I guess that’s a blessing : )

Whoa, that was some serious wind overnight topped off with a little rain but we survived the onslaught. We headed north from Cradock up to Hawker just 16 kms away where we had aa quick look around and a shop before heading up the main drag to turn onto the Barachina Gorge Road. We made our way through the gorge which has obviously seen some very heavy rainfall recently as there were numerous overturned trees and others with flood debris wrapped around their bases. It is a particularly beautiful stretch of scenery. After going through the gorge we travelled up to Blinman which was swamped with so many tourists that there was nowhere to park. We decided to give the cafe a miss and travel back through the Parachilna Gorge back onto the main road at Parachilna.

We had hoped to stay at the the Old Schoolground Camp at Parachilna but it was closed because of the COVID-19 restrictions so we booked into the hotel for lunch tomorrow (COVID restricted numbers again) then headed up to Copley (4 kms north of Leigh Creek) to stay in the Copley Quandong Caravan Park and Cafe. Pretty basic amenities (dirt sites, old washroom facilities but all very clean) but reasonably priced and with very few residents at the time. This park is situated on the traditional lands of the Kuyani people

We had a quiet night preparing for a lunch tomorrow.

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.