None of this lying-in bed for hours on Sunday morning. We were on a mission … we weren’t quite sure if we would be staying the night in Crystal Brook or Balaklava. As it turned out it was neither. It was the last day of the school holidays so there was plenty of early activity in the park … and plenty of traffic on the roads both heading north and south. Just up the road we pulled over to adjust our caravan mirrors then pushed on to Port Augusta where we bought fuel. Just out of town we pulled into a lovely parking bay for mid-morning coffee. It was a large parking bay situated on a wide creek … actually most of it seemed to be in the creek bed. It had the most beautiful old ... read more

Being Wednesday, it was Egg and Bacon breakfast day. If you know Greg, you will understand. We didn’t see T in the morning as he had already left for work but Z was busy in the kitchen preparing the ‘right’ Wednesday breakfast as her departure gift to us. It was most enjoyable. We had been woken several times in the night to the sound of rain on the roof, so it was not surprising that the morning was a little soggy. There had been a heavy fog, but we only saw the last hint of it. We stopped for lunch in Port Augusta before heading off towards Whyalla, where we were to spend 2 nights catching up with our dear friends Sheila and Brian. Surprisingly we had foreshore sites adjacent to each other even though neither ... read more

Travelling in the caravan is a great lifestyle. You meet wonderful people, you see wonderful places, many off the beaten track. You experience weather. All kinds of weather. You have to be tough have a sense of humour, be resilient and great problem solvers. It seems you also need to have a bottomless bucket of money. Things go wrong! We have been very lucky in so far as we have been able to manage all of our issues with relative ease. Some are not so lucky. We have heard plenty of those stories. Leaving Coober Pedy, we joined the Stuart Highway travelling south. A large road train loaded with hay passed us going in the opposite direction. Next minute we heard a ‘ping’ sound and then noticed a small chip low down on the windscreen. It ... read more

The previous night we were horrified to find the 12v cable connecting the Engel car fridge to the thumper battery in our car had broken so our fridge which we had set as a freezer and was full of frozen meat …. Including a 3 ½ kg brisket for our son, was no longer working. Thankfully the caravan fridge was working ok, so we transferred all the frozen meat into that fridge. That damned brisket was on the verge of being too big. With the door shelves removed, we managed to just squeeze it in. Phew! A bucket under the water tank caught most of the precious water trying to escape. What we couldn’t use immediately we fed back into the tanks. With an unreliable caravan fridge, an Engel car fridge not working, a considerable amount ... read more

Next stop, Farina to check out the ruins. We heard about this place just a few days before we left on our trip. The volunteer restoration programme and the Underground Bakery captured our imagination so we opted for a couple of nights here instead of going on to Maree. The volunteer restoration project runs for 10 weeks from May through to July. Anyone can volunteer, skilled or no specific skills. Teams of volunteers work on the designated project for the year. There are teams involved in cleaning, stone masonry, all aspects of the bakery through to garbage and campground fees collection. Many of the volunteers are grey nomads, some returning almost every season. People come from all over Australia to volunteer. Buildings are being restored just to a height where visitors can wander through and imagine ... read more