Sunday May 25

Quick update before we go down to Willunga in lovely McClaren Vale tomorrow.

Arrived here in Port Augusta yesterday after a quick, but fascinating, trip from Yulara. Wasn’t long after leaving Yulara on Thursday that we spied Mt Connor to the south and we reflected on how famous it would be if it hadn’t had to compete with Uluru just up the road!

The rain that this whole area has obviously enjoyed of late meant that there is a carpet of green overlaying much of the landscape and all but the rockiest areas look quite verdant. There was lots of water along the roadsides all the way across to the Stuart Highway and as we travelled south across the NT/SA border the cloud banks ahead were looking ever more threatening. We had decided to stop for the night at the Marryat Creek Roadside Stop and as we got closer, the weather was looking really exciting - what a superb sky

Happily the worst of it passed by to the east so we made it safely to our stop where we had a lovely evening chatting around the fire (number two for the trip!) to Rod and Tania from Traralgon and Bob and Bev from Lamaroo in SA, all of whom were travelling north.

On Friday we continued south, through Marla and Coober Pedy. Since we last passed by here in 2009 the opal mining areas have grown enormously, not entirely surprisingly and there are huge mounds across the landscape – looks like giant moles have been at work. It would seem that there is not much of a requirement for restoration of the areas after mining.

Great clouds and incredible green vegetation - more beautiful colours!

Spent Friday night at another roadside stop just out of Coober Pedy and enjoyed yet another fire, which kept us warm as we revelled in the joys of the horizon to horizon star-filled sky.

No clouds on Friday night - just this gorgeous sunset

South of Glendambo we began to see some of the many salt lakes of the Lake Eyre Basin, one of the largest internally draining systems in the world. Lake Hart was a huge surprise and we are not certain whether it had water because of the rain or not, but it is huge and quite a surprise in the middle of this vast arid, but now green, area.

This is only a fraction of Lake Hart - it went much further to the east

Murray checking out the salt

The salt was in huge crystals and had bleached the twigs lying around.
The red dust which has blown in adds to the effect

The pink areas are, we presume, due to the red algae which grows in
salt lakes such as this

Island Lagoon, another amazing salt lake south of Pimba

As we neared Port Augusta the Flinders Ranges loomed to the east and as always when we see them, we marvelled at their incredible, stark silhouette against the sky. Every time we see them I want to go there!

Green, purple, blue and more beautiful clouds!

We have enjoyed a very pleasant day here in Port Augusta and again visited one of our favourite places – the Arid Land Botanic Gardens. The Eremophilas (from a Greek word meaning ‘desert loving’) were in full flower and I managed to show a great deal of restraint and bought only three plants to take home! Many Eucalypts and other plants were also flowering so there were vast numbers of butterflies fluttering around, collecting nectar from the plants with the more open flowers. Not sure what these two were – will have to wait until I get home and can consult my ‘Butterflies of Australia’ book.

What a gorgeous spotted body!

We are looking forward to catching up with our friends in Willunga and the Adelaide Hills over the next couple of days and then it will be off towards home on Thursday. I will do my very best to do one final post once we get back on Friday, just to sign off on the trip properly!