Blogs from Renmark, South Australia, Australia, Oceania

Hello again, day 15 and we are still driving South through the state of South Australia. We spent the afternoon and night at Port Augusta. Not impressed with this town. It is situated in a natural port but it does not have an active community surrounding the water. Not sure why but it appeared the water was surrounded by Industry. Anyhow we move off, again after a Macca's coffee. The surrounding landscape was very different to the dryness that we had been used to. We found rolling hills, lush meadows and trees, lot of trees. There was a patch that was desert like but it did not last long. We stopped at an old Historical mining town called Burra. Very quant and we stopped at the local bakery hoping we could find a traditional cream bun ... read more

Hi travel followers. Just thought I had better give you an update on our travels and adventures as I just discovered it has been almost 2 weeks since our last blog and a lot has happened. From Port Lincoln we travelled up the east side of the Eyre Peninsular to Cowell via Tumby Bay, Port Neill and Arno Bay. As it was extremely windy and this was Melbourne Cup day, we were looking for a spot to pull up where we could join in with the local activities and most importantly, out of the wind. Cowell ended up being an excellent opportunity as they had a old style pub with a "pig on the spit" lunch for $12 almost beside van park. Also, as this part of the world is renowned for their "oysters" the pub ... read more

This morning we got up early as we had heard that the bridge opens at 9.30am to allow access for the houseboats and we wanted to watch the bridge go up. The houseboats then need to negotiate Lock 5 on the Murray River. There are 13 Locks along the Murray (I did not know that we had Locks on the Murray). I was quite excited and looking forward to seeing a houseboat pass through the Lock. We were so lucky, when we spoke to the man who operates the Lock he said it has been very quiet and that, on some days, no boats are passing through the lock; but today there was a boat. YAY! It was all very interesting and operated by a little hand remote control. We had a lovely chat to the ... read more

Coober Pedy to Renmark Our journey towards home has led us along regions of the Old Ghan Railway line, adjacent the Oodnadatta Track to see water in the great artesian basin – Lake Eyre. There is a well known Dog Fence that crosses the William Creek (population 16) Road and Oodnadatta Track, stretching 5600km’s from the Great Australian Bight (SA) to Darling Downs (Qld) – the longest fence in the world (twice the length of the great wall of China). Built to keep dingos out of sheep country on the southern side of the fence, while many cattle remained on the northern side as they are less vulnerable to dingos. We drove through Anna Creek station – the largest working cattle station in the world! It measures 24,000 square kilometres (bigger than Belgium, and almost ... read more

We left Mannum at around 9:30am, and travelled up the Murray river. We came to a ferry crossing and proceeded over the big renowned river. The route we chose was as suggested by a couple of locals, and it was a great drive. We managed some wonderful views of the Murray in all it’s glory, with full banks to overflow and it had cut a swath through thousands of years to leave behind a meandering bed with high cliffs and plateaus. So interesting, we stopped at one point to take in some views and a couple of photos, to observe sea shells un-covered along the side of the road. Amazing considering it must be many thousands of years, if not millions, since the sea was in this region. A lovely relaxed drive and a wonderful experience ... read more