We woke up on a chilly morning and took a while to get going, but once we were awake we realised that this was the day that we would finally be home. We were both keen to be there already and there wasn’t going to be much that would stop us now. Instead of stopping to boil the billy, fill the thermos and make our breakfast we just packed up and hopped in the camper and we were off. We agreed to try to find something for breakfast at Kimba (just a little bit down the road).
Near Kimba we came across a road heading off of the main highway to the right called “Venus Bay Road”. But it doesn’t head towards Venus Bay at all. It seems to head towards Cowell. Why is this road called this name??? If someone can explain this to us we will appreciate the solution to the puzzle. The black circle is the location of the road. This also shows Kyancutta (far left) and Kimba (far right) and the location of Caralue Bluff (our camp from last night) for those who are interested.
Kimba wasn’t as open as we expected. We thought one of those little cafes in town might be open to give us a quick brekkie, but we were wrong. After a quick lap of town we headed down to the Big Galah on the highway and ordered bacon and egg sandwiches for breakfast and cups of tea. We used their loos while we waited for the food and admired the work going on on the Galah himself.
The Galah is having a makeover currently and at present he has scaffoldig around him and it is a bit hard to get the feel of what it will be looking like, but it does look like an improvement. After nearly 30 years the old galah was starting to look a bit tired. Now a couple of artists from Port Lincoln have been commissioned to fix him up. You can read about it here: https://www.portlincolntimes.com.au/story/7404022/galah-gets-peoples-attention-even-under-wraps/
As we started to reach the wind farm territory we noticed that lost so the wind turbines were not turning or turning veery slowly today. There is a very strong wind today. Are like like this because the wind is too strong for them? Later on the drive we saw that the Snowtown ones were turning more normally. On the subjectof wind turbines, we were amazed to see hwo many there now are on the main highway just south of Port Augusta (near the Sundrop site) . We counted approximately 30 on one side of the road and another 18 or so on the other side (in various stages of construction). These seem to have gone up really fast. (much faster than any of the roadworks seem to be progressing). When we came through this are in lateMay, heading for Hiltaba we counted only 24 (some still partial) on one side of the highway, and saw none on the other.
The new bridge at Port Augusta is progressing, and we crossed this at about noon, but not really feeling hungry yet, we opted to keep on driving.
We drve through Port Pirie without a stop too. This is unusual for us since our friends Peter and Belinda and their family live here and we usually try to drop in as we go past. We had phoned them the night before and found out that they were going to be busy with hockey finals all day, so even Pirie couldnt stop us today.
We stopped at the roadhouse at Red Hill finally. We used the loos and bought a pie each for lunch. Still no time for a cuppa. We ate our pies and then we were off again. It was as though the family were calling us.
We had promised to keep the fam posted about our progress so we started to send little messages of update on our progress.
The Pink lake at Lochiel (Lake Bumbunga) was beautiful – with much more variety of colour and texture than the famous pink tourist icon (Hutt Lagoon) on the WA coast, and then new Nessie there does look very impressive. It had us ruminating on the fact that we had travelled out of our way to see the other one, but always take thsi one for granted as we drive past. There are so many places in our state taht we should see and appreciate more than we do.
We passed under the new bridge at Port Wakefield and were happy to see that the roadworks had at least progressed there. Sadly it seemed to our eyes that those past Port Wakefield along the road were almost stalled, with traffic crawling along at 60km/h and 40km/h for ages. I guess we were in a hurry to be home, so it seemed more frustrating to us than it might normally have been.
We stopped to do our final fuel fill for the trip at Pooraka. (133.5/litre) and poured another $150 worth of fuel into the tank.
Then we really were on the very last leg before we saw the family. We trekked to the south-east and out towards Ben’s place. Thom and Laura were tracking across from our place at the same time. When we put in an update to say that we were at the Darley Road corner we had a message float back”so are we”. So we pulled up out the front of Ben and Jasmine’s place at about 3.30 in the afternoon (much earlier than we had expected to) dying to see the all and to have a cup of tea. We waited on the driveway for Thom and Laura to arrive (about a minute behind us) and started the hug fest. Laura looks really pregnant!!! All the photos have looked like this expected baby might be a fake, but now we know for sure that there is another grandbaby growing inside there. Hooray. Molly the dog was keen to get in on the act and greeted us with an enthusiasm only she can manage and Ben had woken up poor Sophia so that she could greet these keen strangers as well. She managed the noise and excitement with happy gummy grins and the trademark killer dimples and grabbed our hearts all over again.
You will all be surprised (as I was) that I was not a teary mess. I was just a happy Grandma and Mum, back with my family again and feeling like we were all just where we needed to be right now.
Thom and Laura had made some lasagna for tea, so there were no decisons about food to be made. We just sat around, and caught up on life and spent the afternoon and evening being together.
Luvapuzzle 