DAY 3 : ALDINGA BEACH, SA - MONALENA LAGOON REST AREA, SA

Left Adelaide in the dark about 6:30 am to avoid the traffic. Wolfgang was anxious about towing the caravan on the freeway across the city but all went well.

The countryside up the A1 highway inland from Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf was flat and uninteresting. However Port Pirie, about 2 hours north of Adelaide, was a pleasant surprise - a lovely town on the water with historic buildings, parks and gardens.

We parked the van in a wide, leafy street with sporting fields and these
memorial gates on one side and parks
with this gazebo on the other.

Visited the folk museum at the old railway station. Originally the steam train came down the centre of the street - see old pic below - it carried passengers but its main purpose was to deliver ore to the smelter. Port Pirie is one of the largest integrated zinc and lead producers in the world.

Port Pirie Railway Station in the early 1900s,
A stained glass memorial window in the museum showing the lead smelter in Port Pirie which has been in operation for 120 years.
An old typewriter in the museum with a kind of keyboard which locked up easily. Remington later brought out the "quirty" keyboard which we still use today and which doesn't lock up when the typist gathers speed.
Port Pirie has many lovely old homes like this Victorian mansion.
Because the lead smelter filled the air with lead fumes, the rainwater was too dangerous to drink and during World War II the government decided to build a pipeline to bring fresh water down from Morgan on the Murray River. They commandeered "alien" residents such as Italian fishermen to work on the line. There was a real fear that these aliens would reconnoitre with enemy submarines in the gulf so they threatened to take away their livelihood and offered them alternative employment on the pipeline rather than be interred for the duration of the war.

Another piece of trivia learnt at the museum involves the ballast dumped into the river off the old sailing ships. Amongst all the rock is thousands of human bones. Archeologists have established that they were part of ballast on ships from France and that they most likely came from huge mass graves probably of people who died of the plague in the middle ages!!

Travelled on to Port Augusta at the top of Spencer Gulf. This area was first visited by young Matthew Flinders in 1802. This is another industrial town dominated by a huge coal fired electricity plant which supplies 40% of the electricity requirements of South Australia. It is also a significant rail 'crossroad" for the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Aquaculture is also a growing industry.

Visited The Australian Arid Lands Botanic Garden (www.aalbg.sa.gov.au) This is a beautiful native garden with 12 kms of walking track and points of interest with sculptures, a nursery, etc. We specifically went to find the Sturt Dessert Pea but the drought had virtually wiped them out and we only saw a few remains.............

Wolfgang at the entrance gates of the botanic gardens with the Flinders Rangers in the background.
An iron sculpture in the garden.....
Port Augusta at the top of the gulf with the power station in the background.
Port Augusta looking towards the Flinders Ranges.
Drove into real Outback country with red soil and salt bush. Stopped at a free camping site 102 kms. NW of Port Augusta - leaving us 435 kms tomorrow to reach Coober Pedy.

In this hot countryside, quite a few of the free roadside camp sites have a roof and water tank. Ours came also with a table and chairs. We were not far from the railway line and all through the night there were huge long freight trains with additional engines along the cars to pull distant parts of the train up hills!