WHY WHY WHY WHYALLA

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The morning flies made it impossible to do our planned maintenance. Not only were they trying to get up our nose and in our ears but they were very interested in the engine bay! We gave up and drove to Whyalla to find the camping shop. As we approached Whyalla we were greeted by the sight of huge steelworks pumping smog into the air. A seaside town with smoggy steelworks reminded me of places in the North East of England. We arrived outside the camping shop to find that it had long since failed and closed down. In fact it had been closed so long that a cycle shop had replaced it and also since failed. Disappointed we decided that since we were here anyway we may as well have a look around. We found that most of the other shops in the town had also closed down and all the remaining locals walked round with a look that said “I would love to get out of here but I just cant be bothered!” This I’m sure was once a thriving community, but now it was a rough and ready place whose main tourist attraction was a tour round the steel works. We decided that the excitement of this would probably be too much and drove back to Port Augusta.

We were in search of a place that would exchange our gas bottle - that was older than Andy. Every shop we went to couldn’t help but pointed us in the direction of someone that may be able to. Each time we were sent somewhere else it was always in the direction we had just come from so we spent the day going backwards and forwards over the same bridge - I lost count of how many times. We managed to swap it eventually but after hours of searching we were tired and fed up of shopping. We found a campsite and booked in for two nights so that we could spend some time relaxing by the seaside before heading into the outback. On our journey so far the night temperature had dropped so we had the roof down at night but tonight the temperature didn’t drop below 30 all night so the roof stayed up and the windows open - tomorrow was set to be a cracking days sunbathing.

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