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Saturday 18 th May, WhyallaBig4 Whyalla Caravan ParkCost $41 per night Rated by us 8/10 amazing view but windy
Mileage 23209 travelled 270kmWell we wanted to get out of the heat of Darwin and we have certainly done that with another freezing cold night buried under all the blankets we have in the van, talk about one extreme to the other!Before heading of to Whyalla, our stop for tonight, we headed off to the Woomera Open Air Museum, this was the reason for our detour off the main highway.The museum is by way off open air displays around the streets of the town. It is very obvious that this was once a military base as all the housing is uniform and well laid out. This was the testing base for the first British/Australian nuclear bombs back in the 50’s. The weapons, rockets and planes on display cover a wide range of testing and things from the second world war like the Nissan Huts I remember been used a lot in the UK,Some ares of the town and surrounds are still “No Go’ areas even after all these years, signs still say “Restricted Access Area” We had hoped to
grab a coffee here and it did not look good until we spotted a guy walking with a coffee cup in his hand, we asked him where he had bought it and ended up chatting to him for ages. Si was an African American who would not say exactly what he was doing here other than, he worked for the RAAF. He ended up asking us all sorts of questions about our experiences in the USA and how we thought Australian was different to the US. We could only really come up with one big difference we noticed and that was how patriotic the Americans are. With four flags in WA we seem to have lost the plot on our allegiance to Australia, he was blown away by our honesty and asked for our names and then gave us a felt heart felt hand shake. He was a really interesting guy to chat to.We headed off to the Heritage Centre to get our coffee and were surprised to find a large number of Australian and American defence personnel having coffee and then they all disappeared into some meeting. To say the town is supposed to have been deserted by the
military is incorrect, something is going on, Si would only say that “we have an alliance with you, you are all safe”. G reckons they are testing the new drone weapons which are been developed with the USA due to China's posturing the South China Sea.The coffee was great and the Heritage Centre was fascinating, as was the bonus of the chat to Si, great morning well worth the detour.The road to Whyalla continued to be what I call “typical outback Australian roads” dead straight and disappearing off to the horizon, they seem to go on for ever. We stopped close to Whyalla to look at the vast salt lakes out here. No photograph can do justice to the vastness and desolation of the outback areas we are travelling through.The scrub seems to support sheep which we saw grazing along the way. I managed to get a shot of an ore train probably some 4/5kms in length amazing. As we approached Whyalla the Flinders Ranges are visible on the horizon and closer in as we travelled, strange after all the flat desolation to see mountains. The BIg4 caravan Park is literally on the ocean front, you can walk straight onto
the beach from our site. This would be an amazing spot in the good weather but it is “biting us in the arse” so to speak as it is so cold and windy we had to hibernate a soon as the weak sun went down. All blankets and track suits now in use against the cold it is bitter,
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