Sceale Bay to Port Augusta

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We covered a lot of ground today. We set out from Sceale Bay about 8.30am and pretty much repeated yesterday’s trip, but joined the Eyre Highway at Wudinna rather than Minnipa. Wudinna is the home of the Australian Farmer Statue. First conceived in 1992 the eight metre, 70 tonne granite sculpture, carved by Marijan Bekic, was unveiled in 2009.

With another 100 kilometres on the odometer we found ourselves in Kimba. Kimba has several art installations in and around town. Before lunch we viewed the Art Silo completed by Cam Scale in September 2017, the recycled steel sculpture of Edward John Eyre and an indigenous tracker at Whites Knob Lookout and the mural at the recreation reserve. Cathy was also excited by the fact that the football oval is named after former Geelong player, Corey Enright. I volunteered to hike all the way across the oval with her so that I could take a photograph of her in front of the scoreboard with Corey’s name on it.

After lunch we found The BIG Galah on the other side of the railway line. The galah has recently had a facelift to celebrate its 30th birthday this year. At the moment it is a very vibrant pink! Kimba is also famous for being the halfway point if you are crossing Australia … from Sydney to Perth. Since we aren’t on an epic journey from one side of the continent to the other we decided that the halfway point wasn’t relevant for us. Besides the truck was far to dirty to be photographed in front of the Halfway Across Australia sign!

We were going to stop for another leg stretch in Iron Knob, but it’s not right on the highway so we decided to keep on going to Port Augusta. We checked into the same hotel that we stayed in on the way over. We were upgraded to executive rooms last time for no extra charge. Unfortunately, no such luck today, but we decided to pay the extra $25/room to secure rooms on the ground floor rather than lug all our gear up a flight of stairs.

The next thing on the agenda was to wash the MU-X because it is filthy and every time we touch it we get dusty and grimey. With the afternoon getting away we decided to visit the car wash on the way out to Quorn for our ride on the Pichi Richi Railway. The Sundowner Explorer wasn’t scheduled to depart until 5.30pm, but we had been asked to be at the station at Quorn by 4.30pm to check in.

With a gleaming car, we arrived in Quorn just a couple of minutes after 4.30pm to check in and collect our tickets. The train ride is so popular that they were hooking up an extra carriage to meet the demand. It’s great that a service that is run by enthusiastic volunteers is being so well patronized.

It has been hot today and still very warm at 5.30pm so a perfect evening for a vintage train ride. We chugged up to the Pichi Richi summit and then coasted down to Woolshed Flat. While the train was turned around we were able to purchase refreshments in the canteen and/or make use of the facilities. With the sun setting and kangaroos/wallabies hopping about beside the line, we chugged back up to the pass before coasting back down into Quorn at about 8.00pm.

With it now fully dark it was the first test of the LED light bar that Bernie had fitted on the truck’s bull bar or, as I like to call it, the bogan light! So, it’s wired into the factory standard lights and it is on when the lights are on high beam and it is off when the lights are on low beam. Now this thing would just about melt bitumen at 50 paces. It is bright!! With auto high/low beam selection activated the reflection that we were getting off the roadside signs and reflectors was causing the headlights to flash from high to low, back to high to low, high, low. It was annoying to say the least! Bernie eventually had to pull over to work out how to deselect auto high/low beam so that he could do it manually when there was ACTUALLY an oncoming vehicle!! The main thing is, we made it back into Port Augusta without hitting any wildlife. Thank goodness for that.



Steps for the day: 7,565 (5.25km)

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