JBQ Lost in AUSTRALIA: 30th September- Travel to Port Augusta.

Morning dawned cool and fresh in Port Lincoln,seas calm and mirror like where we had a beautiful view of the bay from our hillside caravan site. Packed in record time and took one last look at Port Lincoln and headed out over the hills to the north. The coast line reminded us of the South of France, the houses, the road and the ocean drive hugging the coast just like in Nice.

It warmed up as we drove north, stopping at Cowell a small fishing town for our coffee break. It was very oldie worldly with the buildings kept very original. Here they have special pale green Jade but the shops were closed over the lunch period.The temp reached 33 deg and it started become very overcast with a low mist so that we couldn’t see past the fields. Cowell

We stopped at Whyalla, here it was very very windy and the visibility was extremely poor, however we did have a look at the Whyalla Corvette in the town which they had hauled two miles up from the sea to its present dry land display at the museum. We drove straight through Port Augusta, we did see the one steel HQ and the dumps from the mines but unfortunately we weren’t able to see anything of the Flinders Ranges because of the poor visibility as we drove over the Horrocks Pass. We continued on over the pass on to Melsrose the oldest town in the Flinders which is at the base of Mt Remarkable where we stayed at a Bush camp in the National Park.The camping ground by the stream was full so we had unpowered site over on the other side of the stream in the Nat Park, much better and quieter with open fires optional, toilets provided and cold running water.

We went into town over the swing bridge so we didn’t get our feet wet and walked around looking at all the old buildings, the disused brewery and huge old gum trees, also and checked out the Heysen Trail (for Stuart V.)and the Mawson Bike Trails which pass through here. Had a look at the candelabra flat style power poles which are very often painted with a local scene.

The story of Jacka’s Brewery –photo above

It was still very warm though we were expecting the weather to change. Overnight we had strong wind gusts, when I had to get up in the middle of the night to secure the awnings over the bed pullouts. The temp also started to drop along with some heavy rain squalls. Thank god we weren’t in a tent. However we both slept warm and dry.