Advertisement
Published: June 10th 2010
Kangaroo Is highlight
Admiral Arch was spectacular -NZ fir seals were on the rocks and in the water here.Hi all
We had a good flight back to Adelaide from NZ last Thursday, got our car and van out of storage , and were all set up at West Beach before mid day. We spent a few days getting organised, but had to wait to Tuesday for Coromal to replace our boot (under warantee). Chris did a little maintainance, but we decided, since we had time up our sleeve, to pay the expensive price and visit Kangaroo Island. We had talked to quite a few people who said it was a great place to visit, and a "must do". It was about the only place we hadn't been in S.A. On Saturday we were picked up from nearby Glenelg at 6am, dropped to the coach which took us down to Pt Jervis. We boarded the 9am ferry and it rained all the way accross to Kangaroo Island. It cleared as we berthed, but was still really cold. We did the day highlights tour, which took us vertually right around the island. We visited Seal Bay, where the ranger took us to see the sealions basking on the beach and up in the sandhills. Next we went to Vivonne Bay, further
on the south coast. After lunch there we saw a bird of prey show. Chris got involved with 2 birds sitting on him. Then it was further south west to Remarkable Rocks and later Admiral's Arch, another nature window. These were probably the best we've seen. There were sealions and NZ fir seals all along this coast. We drove through the Flinders Chase National Park and eventually back to Penneshaw. We boarded the 7.30pm ferry back tp Pt Jervis, and then the coach back to Adelaide, arriving back to the van about 10.30pm, so it really was a full on day, but really worth it.
Tuesday morning we were at Coromal before 7.30am, got our repairs done and were out of Adelaide, heading north.
We headed up the edge of the Barossa Valley and Clare Valley, stopping at Kapunda for lunch beside the "Big Miner". We continued up the back roads to Marrabel, then joined the main road at Saddleworth to Burra. We headed to the only caravan park there to find it was full! A real surprise, they sent us to the nearby showgrounds where we had power for $10 for the night. It was really cold, about 8
- 10 degrees with a cool wind, so we were really pleased to have our little heater.
After looking around Burra, an old copper mining town with lots of bluestone buildings still in good condition, and driving around the heritage trail and doing the lookouts the next day, we decided to head for somewhere warmer! North we went, and stopped at the railway town of Terowie. It is where the rail gauge changed - all the loads had to be changed to different wagons for the trip further north on a narrower gauge rail line. It is now pretty much a ghost town.
Next we drove to Peterborough, which was the big raiway town in the area, where the rail lines met in each direction - from Broken Hill in the east, the Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs and also the railway west to Pt Augusta and WA. We went to the very good railway museum there. They have a rail turntable that took the biggest engines and a round house where the engines could go to be worked on, there are 23 bays with the various gauges of rail. They had lots of different engines and carriages that
we looked through. After booking into the caravan park at Peterburgh for the night , we looked around the town further. That night we went to the Sound and Light show at the museum, it showed a very good film about the railways in the area. Unfortunately, it was still cold and drizzly weather.
Today we drove through to Broken Hill, so we are now in NSW, and will have the weekend here, maybe longer. We've only done the Visitor Centre so far. The silver mine is right beside the town.
We have decided it's too cold to think of going to Canberra, so will continue north east from here, hopefully to where it is warmer.
Regards Lynne and Chris
Advertisement
Tot: 0.143s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0598s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Susi
non-member comment
Hi
Hi Lynne, Sorry we missed seeing you while you were in NZ, but it is so great to get your blogs again. They are always a highlight. Seeing Chris in a "beanie hat" though shows how cold it must have been for you.