Renmark - Berri - Morgan - Burra - Melrose - Woomera - Coober Pedy
South Australia

We are on the move now on our way up to Daly River in the Northern Territory.

After Mildura we set up camp, yet again by the Mighty Murray, at a place called Lyrup Flats between Renmark and Berri. Both Renmark and Berri are beautiful river towns. They are quite pristine, so clean and green with well kept town gardens, delightful foreshore areas and friendly locals. The river here is really wide with low banks and with great weather we did lots of walking and exploring.

From there we moved on to Morgan where we spent our first night in a caravan park. Its not fun looking out of every window and seeing the side of another caravan, nor did we enjoy listening to everyone else's conversations. We have really been spoilt by by bush living! It did give us time however to do our first loads of washing, top up our water with a hose rather than lugging 20litre water bags from foreshore picnic reserves, charge up batteries, give the dunny a good clean out and spruce up the van. As far as caravan parks go this one wasn't bad. At least we had really long showers and there was plenty of space for each van and it was beside the river...and as the afternoon wore on it filled up with grey nomads just like us! Chores done we walked around town and ended up at the Terminus Hotel, one of the two lovely old pubs on top of the hill, had a well-deserved drink and watched the ferry carry its loads of cars across the river.

Next morning (Monday) we headed off to the quaint town of Burra to meet up with Blackie and Phil to travel in convoy for the rest of the trip to Daly. Burra is as delightful at ground level as it is from the air. The historic old open cut mining town with its turquoise lake is very quaint with lots of lovely old buildings. We had a good walk around, bought locally grown lamb racks from the butcher, picked rosemary from the town garden beside the old bridge and had a cappy. We drove up the hill separating the north and south sections of the town and had a look at the lake and mining ruins and down over the town.

From Burra we travelled through interesting cropped farm country to Melrose via Spalding, Gulnane and Gladstone arriving around 3. At Melrose we camped at the showgrounds at the base of Mount Remarkable. There were and only a handful of campers over acres of ground so more to our liking than Morgan. I had a good bike ride and James played ball with Phil. He really enjoyed the extra company and attention. We all had a few drinks and BBQ dinner together.

We left Melrose around 8.30 Tuesday for the beautiful drive to Port Augusta through the southern tip of the Flinders Ranges and then on to Woomera where we stopped for lunch and a look at the rocket displays. Another few hours on the road had us finally ending a long day in the car around 6pm at Coober Pedy where we stayed in a pretty rough old caravan park. They did however make a fantastic pizza there and we could plug into power and run the aircon which was fantastic given it was around 40 degrees and windy as buggery.




The Stuart Highway is a great road with lots of straight sections and long gentle bends and very slight undulations between PA and CP. We sat comfortably just under 100kph and the Beast felt as though it had no load on at all. The countryside was mostly scrubby trees and saltbush, red and desserty.







Yesterday we had another long day on the road covering around 700k departing Coober Pedy at 8.30 and arriving at Alice Springs around 6pm. The Beast had amazing fuel economy with a bit of a tail wind. We did have a hiccup with the aircon but it righted itself thank god as the temp outside was 37 degrees.

The further north we got the more interesting the countryside became with granite outcrops and hills. We started listening an audiobook "The Life of Pi" which I really enjoyed but Brian wasn't so into it. It certainly helped pass the time as did a bit of music but nevertheless it was a very long day in the car and James was quite over it by the time we stopped at Heritage caravan park about 6km south of Alice Springs. It is actually really nice here - natural bush setting with plenty of trees and grass and large drive through sites with heaps of space. We had a yummy dinner last night - roast rack of lamb, pumpkin, potatoes and peas with gravy. We love the Baby Q!

We really enjoyed sitting outside in the very warm evening last night chatting with Blackie & Phil over a few drinks. James was in his element - he loves the life of the camp dog!