OH WE DO LIKE TO BE BESIDE THE SEASIDE

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We couldn’t have been more disappointed when we woke up to find that last nights 30 degree heat had been replaced with grey sky and a persistent drizzle. Our day didn’t get any better when the new gas bottle we bought wouldn’t turn off properly. We had to pack up and drive around town to find someone who could help us disconnect the bottle. Luckily it wasn’t leaking as it was turned off at the stove but we did have a rather tense hour of driving about while I looked after the gas bottle in the back. We found someone to help us fix the problem but our relaxing day had disappeared by then. We went back to the campsite and started preparing Hilda for the outback. Andy did all the washing while I rebuilt the cupboard to accommodate our new much larger gas bottle - I think there is something wrong with this picture!

Waking up to yet more rain we couldn’t wait to get out of Port Augusta and on to some warm weather. We had been told that all the shops were ridiculously expensive in the outback so we decided to stock up with enough food and water to get us through to Alice Springs. We soon found out why Port Augusta is called a tourist trap when we couldn’t find anything we were looking for and spent hours driving round in circles - this place literally trapped you and didn’t seem to want to let you leave! We had assumed that all the people we saw were locals but maybe they were tourists who had visited long ago and had given up trying to find a way out. We were lucky and finally broke out. We turned onto the Stuart Highway - this road would be our home for the next 1743km. Miraculously as we drove away the sun came out. We hoped this would be a sign of things to come.

When the sun started to set we pulled over in a roadside rest area for the night. We watched the most amazing sunset over the outback. When the sun disappeared the sky was filled with a blanket of stars and the moon shone so brightly that our shadows were cast on the ground as if it were a bright sunny day. Even in somewhere this remote we still didn’t see any roos, we were starting to believe that they didn’t exist.

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