Day 21 – September 21 2012

An early start this morning, I wanted to check that the temporary bolt replacement on the broken shock absorber was still in place & tighten it up if needed.  That meant unpacking the car again, but it needed doing anyway as this morning the left rear tyre was flat, the one that I had repaired with some plugs had gone down slowly overnight.  So out with the brand new spare & repair the old with two more plugs.  It was about 9.30am by the time it was all finished & repacked the car, so we headed down to the Woomera Museum.

The museum at Woomera is in two parts, an outdoor display of the old rockets & planes, then an indoor display that took us through the history of Woomera & the many different types of rockets that were launched from there for all different sorts of reasons.  Both parts of the museum were very interesting & informative, with the museum just about the only active part of Woomera these days.  There are lots of empty buildings & houses, but all the street trees & gardens are still well maintained.

Next we were off on the Stuart Highway again to Port Augusta, about 180km of driving through desert country again with the odd salt lake thrown in on either side.  The main features were the water pipeline from Port Augusta to Woomera & the Darwin rail line that followed the highway along on either side.  Again the vegetation was changing as the geography changed, a lot of red sand & low bushy shrubs, then red sand hills & small trees, then back to low grassy desert.  I noticed a lot of dead cattle in various stages of decay by the side of the road.  We finally drove off the escarpment down to the flat country that is the head of the Flinders Gulf around 50km out of Port Augusta.  We stopped for lunch with Rose & Mike at a roadhouse after refuelling in Port Augusta, then said our farewells, they have left us to head back to Canberra today.  They have been great travelling companions but need to get back home, so Tereza & I are now travelling on our own again.

After Port Augusta we turned north & drove the 33km to Quorn, following the old Pitchi Ritchi rail line up into the Flinders Ranges.  This part of the Flinders is also very nice, a very pleasant winding road.  After setting up camp we walked the short distance to the old Quorn Railway Station, now the Visitor Centre, looked around & headed off on a self-guided walk around the historic buildings in Quorn.  This is interesting, with a lot of the buildings in good condition & built from local stone.  Our walk also took us through the local botanic garden, planted with species that grow within a 30km radius of Quorn.  We spent around 2 hours walking the town before a spot of shopping for biscuits to go with our cheese, back to camp for some cheese & bikkies before doing our washing.   We chatted to some fellow travellers while having dinner & got a few pointers for the next parts of our trip.