We awoke to a 6.00am alarm and a temperature hovering around 5 degrees. Fortunately the overnight temperature had allowed us to have a comfortable night’s sleep. We departed at 7.45am and discovered that the caravan park was located adjacent to the Broken Hill cemetery.Now we understand where the music came from during the night and what all the little white things were when we viewed this site on Google Earth.
Immediate upon leaving Broken Hill the terrain returned to desert and it appeared to be more stark than the terrain approaching Broken Hill from the east. Over the next couple of hours we experienced some significant changes in the landscape culminating with a sight of absolute flat terrain in every direction. Morning tea was enjoyed at a roadhouse at Yunta and we stopped for lunch at Peterborough. The final part of the trip from Peterborough to Port Augusta took about 2 hours and when we crossed the mountains of the Mount Remarkable National Park, we were greeted with a view of the top of Spencer Gulf all the way from Port Augusta in the north to the mountains that run down the western side of the Gulf.
We visited the Port Augusta visitor’s centre where we had afternoon tea then climbed to the top of an old water tower for panoramic views of the Port Augusta area. The caravan park had been pre-booked and once again we were very happy with the choice we had made. Before tea we managed to catch our son on the internet and spoke via a video link for about 20 minutes. During the discussion our neighbours for the night arrived and we decided to greet them. The couple were travelling in a converted 1987 Toyota Coaster Mini Bus. As fate would have it, the male referred to his spouse as “Elaine” and we said in jest. “Your name would not be John, would it?” We spent the next one and a half hours taking with Elaine & John who come from Canberra. They have been travelling for the past 12 years after John retired at the age of 57. They were on their way to Perth and then up the Western Australian coast before a planned return to the ACT in July. John gave us a business card they had designed specifically for people “on the road”.
Tea consisted of the remained of the chicken purchased yesterday supplement with a chicken curry pasta.