Blogs from South Australia, Australia, Oceania - page 2

Although it was a slight detour from our journey northward, we took the time to visit the small town of Woomera, which lies within a Department of Defence owned and operated facility. In common usage, "Woomera" refers to the wider RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC), a large Australian Defence Force aerospace and systems testing range (the 'Woomera Test Range' (WTR)), covering an area of approximately 127,000 square kilometres It is the world’s largest test and evaluation range for ground based, air and space defence systems testing. The Woomera Restricted Airspace (WRX) includes all the airspace over Woomera Test Range from ground to outer space. Woomera Village initially operated as a "closed town" between 1947 and 1982, when the facility supported the operations of the Woomera Rocket Range during the Anglo-Australia Project. This cold-war project focused on ... read more

Heading for the small township of Quorn, located in the Southern Flinders Ranges, we stopped off at the ruins of the township of Wilson, and the ruins of Kanyaka Station. Both of these settlements reveal the folly of trying to farm crops north of the Goyder Line, which was a line drawn across South Australia by Surveyor General George Goyder in 1865, with places above the line receiving an average annual rainfall of less than 250 mm. There were several attempts at cropping north of the Goyder Line when periods of La Nina were present, however, the rainfall soon returned to it’s low average, and the farms were abandoned. During World War II, Quorn was a vital service point for trains heading north to Alice Springs and carried over 1,000,000 troops heading to Darwin and on ... read more

Well its just gone 5 months we have been on the road in the van and already have done 10,000 klms. We were going to stay overnight at Nullabor Roadhouse but because it was such a dust bowl decided to push on and camp somewhere heading north west to Cook, taking in some caves along the track and a track it was! Wow..... rough and slow....120klm drive but for the first 60 odd klm we were averaging 5klm every 15 minutes! At least it wasn't wet but lots of rocks and uneven surfaces but our car and van stood up very well! After leaving Nullabor around 2.30 we pulled up just after 5pm and camped near Noels Caves, it is just amazing that there are caves just popping out of this flat, treeless plains like they ... read more

Naracoorte was formed from the merger of two towns, Kincraig, founded in 1845 by Scottish explorer William Macintosh, and Narracoorte, established as a government settlement in 1847. The name has gone through a number of spellings, and is believed to be derived from the Aboriginal words for place of running water or large waterhole. Naracoorte has historically been a service centre for the sheep, cattle and wheat farming industries in the surrounding area. In recent decades, tourism has become a major industry due to the town's proximity to several wine regions and internationally recognised natural features. The World Heritage listed Naracoorte Caves and the Ramsar listed Bool Lagoon are located near the town. Our first destination to explore was Naracoorte Caves, where we joined a guided tour of the Victoria Cave, which has and continues to ... read more

Monday 22nd May 2023 We said farewell to Moonta and headed north to Port Broughton as our first stop. Rags remembered this place from our previous trip; a one street town leading to a long jetty which faced a beautiful old hotel flanked with pine trees. And so it was. We walked most of the town, had a coffee at the bakery with a bambury, a pastry shaped like a pasty, filled with currants and citrus etc. Very tasty. Then on to Melrose via Crystal Brook (where the Jeep dropped its big-end) through the pretty town of Laura, (adjective put in for our Laura). Stone Hut, about 20kms further was our next stop, the group we travelled with a few years ago raved about the pies they had there. They hadn't lied, Judy had a Thai ... read more