Port Augusta: The Crossroads of Australia
8th July, Port Augusta, Australia
Adios Adelaide and hellooooo to Port Augusta. We said our final farewell to Adelaide with a trip to the Internet Café, allowing one last update to the web site for a while and a visit to McDonalds. Manda commented the other day that she had never had a Care Bear, and Maccas have been doing a promotion here in Australia (and possibly elsewhere), so we've been stopping in at lots of McDonalds restaurants asking the same question: "Got any Care Bears?" and getting the same answer: "Nope, not a cat in hell's chance you're gonna find any Care Bears now." OK, so nobody ever said those actual words, but that's the basic story - there's a national shortage of the little fellas. Still, two out of five is better than nothing, and these two below have started to hitch a ride with us in the kombi:
The drive to Port Augusta is around 350km from Adelaide. It's not the smallest distance to cover, but it is still an 'easing in' to the distances we'll be covering once we head west - I'm expecting to cover 600-700 km a day in old Ethel. Let's hope that she's still up to the job. Rather than head west straight away, though, we'll take a brief diversion north into the Flinders Ranges. We did consider heading even further north to Coober Pedy, an opal mining town renowned for its harsh, arid conditions (so much so that most people there live in underground or cave-cut dwellings). But then we're looking at a diversion of 530km one-way - I wasn't sure that an extra 1,060 kms on top of the 2,500 we planned to get to Perth was a good idea.
Half way up to Port Augusta, we passed a huge breakers yard. I wondered whether I might be able to get any bits and pieces for Ethel, but drove right past. We stopped for petrol and I decided that maybe we should just take a look after all, so we backtracked 1km up the road and tried asking in the office.
"Hello?" I said, peering in to an empty office. Except it wasn't empty - there curled up on a greasy couch was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with his nose tucked in behind his hind leg but with his eyes fixed on me. Friendly dog or guard dog, I wondered. The dog made no move to protect the other grease-covered possessions inside the Portakabin office. Looked like I was safe for now.
The owner appeared in a beaten-up delivery van and, as luck would have it, informed me that he did have some rusting old kombis there. I wasn't after engine parts, just some cosmetic items - interior trim for the old girl that had long since been removed. There I was, scavenging these old kombis with a screwdriver in one hand and a knife in the other, thinking to myself "Ah, this bit would look good on Ethel" and so on. But then we'll be selling her soon, so it seemed crazy to go too far. I managed to scavenge some covers for air vents on the dashboard and some hood-lining to do some patch-up repairs, cost just $10.
"The kombis are over there mate". By the way, that's a yawning
dog in the background, not some other strange Aussie animal.
I commented on his (apparently friendly) dog's beautiful tiger-like coat, asking about a couple of marks on his side. "Has he been bitten by another dog?" "Ah, I think it was a rat," said the owner. "He's always out on the site chasing them, or snakes. Got a death wish, he has."
Snakes? Where I'd just been rummaging around by myself (no supervision) just minutes before, probably in breach of numerous health and safety at work rules?
"He's been in the wars," continued the owner. "I've squashed him once - reversed over his hips I did - he's been hit by a semi-trailer out on the main road and I've run into him another time on the site."
The dog walked nonchalantly off, back to his favourite spot on the couch then gave me a big yawn, revealing a full set of teeth undamaged by regular run-ins with vehicles.
We carried on the drive, arriving at Port Augusta just before 5pm, and therefore just before dark. Dusk is the most dangerous time to be driving on Australia's long highways because of the kangaroos' insistence on jumping out at you and testing the strength of your car/van's roo bars or the efficiency of the brakes (I don't want to test either on a fully-grown Australian red). As such, 5pm is our cut-off time. By 5:15 we want the pop-top up, the kettle on the boil and the fan heater cranked up to the max so that we can start to plan the next day.