Going west again....................Part 1, the first 7 days.

It was decided that we would head west again this year to catch up with Barry's family, but staff holidays meant we couldn't leave before the beginning of December. 

And then at the end of November Barry saw an advert locally for a van that he had been looking at upgrading to. After looking and thinking, we decided to purchase it. There were a few things Barry wanted to add to the van, so this meant a delayed departure while this was organised. The contents of the older van had to be transferred to the newer one and he fiddled around with adding more batteries and sorting the water hoses and other jobs.......................

It is the same brand and almost looks the same, but is not a pop top, 2 feet longer, and a few years younger. We have had some good holidays in the pop top, and will be sold when we return home.

We departed Bordertown on Saturday, December 7th, which just happened to be Mum's 93rd birthday and a family picnic had been planned for the 8th at the beach. So plans were made to stay in Murray Bridge for 2 nights and attend the picnic. (I have already blogged about the picnic.)

Thus it was Monday morning when we headed off, first going to the Barossa to deliver some family Christmas gifts on the way north. Then it was further north to Saddleworth to deliver a customer quilt that I had just finished.

Saddleworth is only a small country town, but the community spirit shone through with the Christmas decorations around the town. In fact we were very impressed with a lot of the little country towns and the obvious effort that went into the decorations.

From Saddleworth we travelled further north and through the historical copper mining town of Burra..............

...........the countryside was changing as we headed north..........the season in our state has been very dry and harvest has not been good in a lot of areas.................

 

....and we finally called it a day at the small town of Orroroo, and the purple line shows our day's travel.

                                   

We stayed hitched up that night which meant a quicker start the next morning............

............further on you could see how the season ended up with no harvest for some, and very little paddock feed for any stock for the next few months.

Just outside Orroroo is a giant gum tree that we stopped to look out. A tree of this size in this country is very unusual.

It wasn't long before we got to Horrocks Pass which is a very windy road going through the hills into Port Augusta............I did a video, but don't know how to get it onto the blog.

Coming down out of the hills are the flats going into Port Augusta with many wind turbines that generate power for our state.......

After going through Port Augusta, there was this sign, either go north to Darwin or West to Perth. We did the Darwin road in June, now we were going west.

Further on the town of Kimba, with their painted silos.............

.....the big galah..............

.......and the sign saying that Kimba is the half way point from one side of Australia to the other.

The little town of Wudinna impressed us with the well maintained and  watered garden beds along the highway and in the parks. And water would be rather scarce in this area with low rainfall.

We finished the day by staying at Ceduna, and this is where Barry noticed a problem with one of the van tyres..............so off to the local tyre place and the problem turned out to be bigger than we expected...................

We ended up staying 2 nights in Ceduna, while the tyres were sorted, and were very relieved that we found the problem before starting across the Nullabor. Ceduna was the last 'bigger' town until we would be well into West Australia.

Back onto the road heading west again, and this is representative of the country..........

There are little dots on the map where you can get fuel, a basic caravan park, and sometimes a motel, but there is little else for many kilometres.............

This is a new addition since our last trip, and is an Electric vehicle charging station.

Fuel at Nullabor was 276 c a litre, and the most we have had to pay so far. (It was 182c when we left home).

                                         Our next stop for the night was at Eucla,                                                                                                                  

which is just on the WA border and where the quarantine station is.

Back on the road again next morning, and we saw a lot of these signs warning of stock on the road. Thankfully we did not see any of these animals.

                      

                                                

                                         As we got further west, the clouds appeared..................

........and they got much darker and more threatening, and before we reached Balladonia, the wind changed and the rain came down...........The temperature had reached 41 during the afternoon, but after the change it dropped to 25 in half an hour. Now that we have crossed the WA/SA border we are rather confused about the time. There is a 2 1/2hour time difference between the states, and WA does not have daylight saving and SA does. It was very strange for it to be dark so early. 

..........which helped us to make the decision to stop earlier in the day, at Balladonia for the night..............and to take the opportunity for a cuppa in the van while we listened to the rain.

I was rather shocked when I opened my eyes the next morning to see it was daylight, and the time was only 4.11AM!!!! Will take some getting used to I think.

I shall finish this post here, and come back with another installment of newsfromjude another day. Perhaps I should say newsfromjudenbazz instead??

Blessings, From Jude (oh, and Bazz!!)