Goodbye SA

Our next 3 days were a bit of a blur really.  It was bitterly cold as we hit Port Augusta on Friday and although we did a bit of shopping to top up fresh fruit & veggies, the light was too poor for photos, the weather too cold for standing out in and frankly PA has never been one of our favourite places for some reason.  We've both always found it quite a depressing place to be.  We booked in to a cheap caravan park that we had stayed in 2 years ago and spent part of the afternoon doing another load of washing.  Unfortunately it was so cold that nothing dried and so the next 24 hours the caravan resembled something like a chinese laundry as we tried to get everything dry enough to put in the cupboards.  The park had deteriorated vastly since our last stay with mold in the showers and a really dirty toilet block all round.  And then there was the overly friendly caretaker's dog which was keen to check out any visitor dogs that arrived and even went inside our caravan when we were trying to get ourselves initially set up. 

From Port Augusta we headed east towards Broken Hill but given the warnings about animal life on the roads from here on, I figured although it was only 412km it would probably be wise to break the trip in half.  So we aimed for Peterborough.  The caravan park at Peterborough is an absolute gem and we were at least able to finish drying off the wet washing on a line.  The showers were so good I told Shane we were moving in!  We only got about an hour of nice warm weather to enjoy though before the temperature started to plummet and once again we retreated to the warmth of the van.  It was an early night with heaters and electric blankets blazing as the wind came up with an arctic quality that belied nearby snow.  If it weren't for the freezing cold temperature I would definitely have got up, dressed, grabbed a large handful of pebbles and thrown them at a stupid magpie that decided 4.00am was time to announce the day had begun and continued to warble non stop for 2 hours in the tree next to us until the sun did actually make an appearance.

Obviously I wasn't the only one to have a hard night as I woke to see this above my pillow......  In case you can't quite figure out which end is which - the head is to the right with all four feet in the air.  It's a hard life for some really!

As it turned out I was extremely grateful to make the decision to halve the trip.  I have never seen so much road kill EVER.  There was at least one body of a kangaroo, wallaby or emu every 50 metres and if it wasn't a freshie, it was a carcass.  And those were just the ones on or beside the road.  There were also many bodies well off the road that had either lived long enough to drag themselves partially into the bush or had been dragged by something.  In the beginning it was shocking to see so many but it soon became quite distressing and often difficult to get by them, having to veer on to the wrong side of the road or off into the gravel to bypass their swelling bodies and the hundreds of large crows feeding off the meat.

You definitely know you are back in the outback again with the miles and miles of nothing.  It's harsh but also has a kind of raw beauty that you can't help but acknowledge.

We had taken our time doing this leg of the journey so arrived in Broken Hill mid afternoon.  The site was very narrow but easy to navigate.  Once we were set up we went for a quick drive to pick up some fresh salad veggies (there's always something you forget!) and take a quick look around Broken Hill.  On our travels we ran across this dude just casually wandering along the street, across the road, and then down the footpath on the other side on his way out of town.