2015/10 Australia trip - Red Banks |
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Tuesday October 6th
It was a beautiful morning but the flies were already up. It’s tough to see what you’re doing when you have flies skating across your eyeballs. We rejoined the Western Highway and soon came to this pink lake, one of a few we’d see on this trip. The pink comes from algae; we went down to the lake’s edge, but down there it was blinding white salt, hard to see the pink.
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Pink Lake (1.23) |
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We crossed the border into South Australia’s time zone and the time popped back 30 minutes. We were now on the Dukes Highway; we didn’t know which Duke but it probably wasn’t the Dukes of Hazzard. The quarantine station was unmanned – this time.
We were driving past wheat and canola fields; the bush had mostly been cleared. We stopped for lunch at a riverside park in the town of Murray Bridge, the site of just that, the
first bridge over the Murray, Australia’s longest river. The park is home to transport relics, a riverboat and this broad-gauge locomotive and some rolling stock.
After crossing the Murray we went north through the hills towards Gawler, bypassing the capital city of Adelaide. This brought us into the vineyards of the Barossa Valley, well known to Shiraz winos.
We arrived at our camping spot, the Red Banks conservation area, a proper campground but too remote for anyone to collect fees. Although the area was wild there wasn’t much to see, except 
for squadrons of galahs screaming overhead. The forecast cold front had come through and the evening was cold and windy. Even this galah looked cold. We slept two down this time.
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Galahs (0.35) |
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Wednesday October 7th
The weather didn’t improve overnight. It was my turn to remember how to drive the camper, starting on the park’s easy and empty roads. I’d been worried about the Parkinson’s affecting my coordination of hands and feet. I found I could change gears and make hill starts, not as well as Sandie but then neither of us would get hired as limo drivers. Although it has similar dimensions to our Jeep, the Troopie always feels more agricultural to me, a bit like a tractor.
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Red Bank (3.56) |
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My test drive took us to the park’s picnic area and there were the Red Banks, crumbly red cliffs above a dry river channel. We walked the channel and found that the cliffs didn’t stretch very far, just on the outside of one bend. We were down out of the wind so we enjoyed our walk; no other people but plenty of birds, including this bee eater.