Ceduna to Broken Hill

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Well, having crossed the Nullabor we stopped for two days in a little Caravan Park called Spear Creek, just east of Port Augusta. It nestles in a dry creek bed on a sheep station of about 16,000 hectares surrounded by stately Ghost Gum trees. We experieced very high deafening winds the first night and on venturing out of the caravan we found the leaves in the high branches nearly being torn off but the trunks and big branches below not even moving. Apparently they have stood for over 500 years and are not about to be blown away yet.
The Flinders Ranges are beautiful and majestic looking like velvet has been draped over a spiked fence, with bright sunshine then dark shadows. High in the hills we found the quaint towns of Quorn where the old Pichi Richi Railway runs steam train rides for visitors, this was the original route of the old Ghan Railway. The architecture was majestic and kept immaculately clean, but being used for practical purposes like the Post Office and Tea Rooms so that all can enjoy them. We travelled on to Hawker and there viewed the most wonderful panorana painted by Jeff Morgan of Wilpena Pound. He and his family built a completely circular building and inside he painted the complete 360 degree view, taken from photographs he skillfully took, ignoring no detail and completely to scale. It was really breathtaking.
This whole area was so dry and dusty and you would be excused in thinking that it had not rained for years. However, when we visited a wonderful art and craft exhibition in Hawker there was a display of photographs from the local Photography Club showing floods as recently as February of this year. Roads and bridges were washed away, stock lost and whole communities cut off for several days. Where does all that water go to leave the countryside so dry again in a few months? Every river bed and creek bed was completely dry.
I was particularly fascinated by the ruins of an old homestead called Kanyata. the site of a thriving sheep station in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The homestead itself had 6 bedrooms, 2 kitchens, office, surgery, lounges, verandahs and a cellar. It was easy to imagine how the family lived there, with a huge shearing shed and baling plant nearby staffed by hundreds of men. The dry creek bed was then a flowing river and the wool was taken down to Port Augusta to be put on ships to be taken to ports around the world. Its complete isolation makes your imagination work overtime, thinking of how they coped without all the mod-cons we have, how they educated their children, coped with childbirth, illness etc., The early pioneers are a group of people to be greatly admired.
Our journey took us on to Broken Hill, which is a remarkable town. When you are in it you feel that it is a real hub of life, busy people, mining, tourism, big shops, children going off to school, but when you view it from the point of view of it's position on the map, it is completely isolated being hundreds of kms from any place of any size.
Our next night is best forgotten, we stopped in a free overnight campsite (no choice really as there was nothing else for kms in either direction). The red dirt you learn to live with, even having a strip bath in a big bucket does not phase us intrepit travellers but the double gees underfoot were too much to bear. We had prickles everywhere and our poor old dog Bazil decided the only place for him was back in the car and there he sat for hours patiently waiting for us to pack up and leave. We must have put on quite a comedy act as we were being observed by hundreds of wild goats.

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