On the road again

With the car repaired, we hit the road again at about 11:15 for the somewhat sureal drive from cobber Pedy down to Port Augusta. A great deal of the way the area that the highway passes through is prohibited for public entry by the commonwealth government. Some of this land has been used for nuclear testing and rocket testing, and I guess that the rest is reserved for future military use. There still seems to be a lot of cattle stations within the prohibited areas, but we didn't see a lot of cows - except for two dead ones about 100km apart, both being dealt with by Wedge Tailed Eagles. I *tried* to sneak up on the second one, but apparently a campervan doesn't fool our feathered friend and I only got within about 100 feet before it took flight


A little further along the road we started to see Salt Lakes, the first of which (but my no means the largest) is Lake Hart


The road then rises up a little onto a completely treeless plateau. No trees as far as the eye can see in all directions. Then you hit the turn off to Woomera. This is an aboriginal name for a "throwing stick" and is also where the British Military tested various rockets after world war II. We decided to have a look and to check out the camping ground. It wasn't long before I realised that "no way" was Libby going to be willing to stay there. It wasn't much of a camping ground, so I was keen to move on to Port Augusta myself anyway but the main reason we didn't stop was because of how spooked out Libby was. It was like a ghost town .... there was practically no-one around. We did see two kids on bikes and a few others in the local pool but aside from that only one car (driving slowly and suspiciously past us, with two huge pig dogs in the back of his ute) when we were stopped at the missile park. No other signs of life. The wind was quietly howling down the street and bits of tin were rattling in the breeze. It wasn't hard to visualise 100's of zombie eyes watching us from the quiet houses hoping we'd stay until sunset. It was eerily like a bad 50's B-grade horror movie! You have to ask yourself why the government prevented public access to this town for so long. It was the most bizzare town I have seen, largely because it looks normal but lifeless.

I assured her that I wouldn't make her stay awake all night in terror, and we drove on to Port Augusta and arrived around dinner time. Not sure where we are going tomorrow, but quite possibly the Barossa Valley or one of the other winery areas before we venture on to Kangaroo Island.

PS: This is our first evening feeling "a tad cool" in about 6 weeks. It would be pretty easy to turn around and head north again!!