Another long four hour drive west to Uluru after staying overnight at Kulgera Roadhouse. We checked into the Voyages Tourist Park Yulara, and after purchasing our National Park tickets, we then drove to Uluru Sunset Lookout to get some photos. Formerly known as Ayers Rock, Uluru is one of Australia's most recognisable natural landmarks and has been a popular destination for tourists since the late 1930s. It is also one of the most important indigenous sites in Australia. Uluru is notable for appearing to change colour at different times of the day and year, most notably when it glows red at dawn and sunset. The reddish colour in the rock derives from iron oxide in the sandstone. The sandstone formation stands 348 m (1,142 ft) high, rising 863 m (2,831 ft) above sea level with most ... read more

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

We had briefly visited Victor Harbor during one of our trips to Adelaide to visit our niece Brittaney, who was working there as a teacher. Our brief experience of the Fleurieu Peninsula drew us back to spend more time in this popular summer destination for South Australians. We crossed the mighty Murray River at the township of Murray Bridge, and then headed south, passing near The Coorong, of Storm Boy fame. Matthew Flinders in “HMS Investigator” visited the bay at Victor Harbor on 8 April 1802, while on the first circumnavigation of the continent, mapping the unsurveyed southern Australian coast from the west. He encountered Nicolas Baudin in “Le Geographe” near the Murray Mouth several kilometres to the east of the present day location of Victor Harbor. Baudin was surveying the coast from the east for ... read more

In the early 19th century whalers and seal hunters used the coast in this region. The crew of the sealing cutter The Fairy captained by James Wishart reportedly gave the bay its current name in 1828. Whatever its origins, the name "Port Fairy" had come into general use by 1835. In 1843 James Atkinson, a Sydney solicitor, purchased land in the town, draining the swamps, subdividing and leasing the land, and building a harbour on the Moyne River. He named the town "Belfast" after his hometown in Ireland, and the names of prominent buildings either bear the name Belfast or Irish names. The town reverted to Port Fairy in 1... read more