Day 49

21 March 2013

We stayed at Point Lowly last night which is 20km from Whyalla and is a free camp. This area also seems to be home to a huge gas mine which seems to connect with Whyalla's steel mining, so big operations going on out here!

Wow we just seem to attract wind! Last night was windy again, while we were thankful we were not back in the camper, we were still getting battered by the wind! The wind was just whistling with incredible force and kept us awake again!

Headed off after a little sleep in (the wind was to blame for this)...had to go back into Whyalla for our big day of driving today! Now we are doing big k's at the moment and the pure reason for this is to get to WA! SA just hasn't lived up to our expectations, it is so dry and really not pretty at all and there is just 100's of kms between towns, it is very boring driving! We were pretty excited today though cuz we did come across a few curves in the road which kept it interesting! Sorry to any South Australians reading! Someone had told us we are here at the wrong time of year so that might have something to do with it.

So yea WA we hope this will live up to expectations cuz really the whole trip was about getting there!

Drove through another mining town at Iron Knob,

And then onto the Eyre Highway towards Kimba, the halfway point across Australia! And home to then Big Galah!! Now this is what I am talking about, it was a BIG galah, it was maintained and it didn't have a big fence around it saying under construction or closed or private property!! So yay big thing!

Fuel at Kimba too so filled her up and saw a pretty cool vintage car and van, which we are blogging about mainly for Joel's dads enjoyment as we thought he would like it. It was from QLD to so maybe even know them!?

We are now settled on the water again, oh so peaceful and will probably stay here for a couple of days before hitting the Nullabor! Fishing is good here so we will be hopefully doing some of it tomorrow!

Carly & Joel

 

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Day 48

20 March 2013

OMG Joel had way too many beers last night....you know how I know this?! He snores and breathes like a freight train! So I got no sleep and he slept like a baby. I actually got up and put earplugs in in the middle of the night! Bad!

Today we were off to Port Augusta for one reason and that was to transfer the new caravan into our name. Head off (after our 5 min pack up hehe), happily driving along the highway and hear a bit of a thud.... We both looked at each other....Joel thought maybe a flat tyre so we slowed down. Joel looks at the reversing camera and notices something doesn't look right.... we are missing the spare wheel!!! Quick radio check to the truck behind us and yep, we lost the spare wheel! Turned around to go look for it and was lying in the merge lane so were able to stop and quickly chuck it in the back.

Strap broke and really we were careless and should've checked before we left to secure it better but too late now! Even better valve busted so leaking air = tyre stuffed! Sort it out in Whyalla when we get there!

In Port Augusta, found the registration place and headed in....now you know a place must be a little rough if there are signs where you queue saying "We will not tolerate abusive or aggressive behaviour, our staff deserve to feel safe at work!" Lined up and was told to fill in a form to get a SA customer number. Ok done, line up again, you can not have a QLD address, you must reside in SA to get a customer number (which I think is totally reasonable; however the caravan centre did tell us this would be a simple process). Further investigation said we could use the caravan park we stayed in as the SA address, great! However the receipt for the caravan park was in my name and all the transfer papers had been done in Joel's name! Argh! Lady was really good and said we could just white it out and redo in my name. Then she needed a stat dec to say that Joel was happy to have it in my name. Off to find JP, back in line and $31 transfer fee later we are away! This took most of the morning and am mainly telling this story in case anyone is thinking of buying a caravan while in a different state you will know what to expect!

Back on road and heading for Whyalla. Quite a nice drive to here because of all the ranges you can see in the backdrop but still so dry and flat and now red red dirt! Every street sign was just covered in red dust! Tyre fixed for $3 (new valve) = happy! The council here mustn't have anything to do cuz we saw a guy mowing the red dirt where grass would normally be growing, guess they have to keep busy somehow!

Found a nice free camp right on the water and we are testing out our new oven! That's right people shutz has an oven!

Joel has been cooking dinner while I have been lying down and enjoying the view from our caravan door....bliss!

Carly & Joel

 

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