Today we took a drive up to the north part of the Flinders Ranges. First we visited the Toy Museum in Willmington. This was a very strange place, the collection of toys was fantastic, but all very dusty and not well cared for anymore. Kids loved seeing the toys though, and it is always funny to see in a museum, toys that I used to play with as a kid.

Next we drove through to Quorn and went to the Quorn and had some lunch at the Quandong café. Must admit on first looking in, it seemed the best of the town options, but was not expecting too much. Found the food excellent, all seemed to be home made and well made.

After lunch decided we would drive north further to see the country side and the Wilpena pound.

On the way though, we also came across one of the old stations / homesteads, which was remarkably well preserved. Seems here, many places were originally built out of stone so have managed to survive very well over the years.

A pound is where an area is circle by hills. Unfortunately nobody told us you could not really see much of the pound unless you wanted to walk a couple of hours. Anyway we did find an icecream shop so at least that was a treat for the drive. There was still some good view of the local country side and the Flinders Ranges.

On the way back we crossed over Goyders Line. This was an imaginary line made by a man called Goyder that was drawn to show the land that would be OK for farming, below the line and no good for farming above the line. This was done in 1865 and apparenty this line has proven accurate over the years!

On the way back we visited one of the hotels in Quorn for dinner.

I was a bit disappointed with the Flinders Ranges. To be fair though I had heard a lot about them, and we have seen an awful lot of fantastic scenery over the last couple of months. Also it seems most of the activities involved substantial walking, which we did not really have time to do.

Another big drive back to a town called Melrose in the Flinders Ranges. Took most of the day to drive there, and two tanks of Diesel! Arrived late to a small but OK park in the small town of Melrose.

First off we checked out the old timer mine, and shop.

This was a shop underground and the an old mine that we could go and look it. Finally we got to walk through their workshop, also underground and then an underground house that was lived in until the early 2000's.

Here there are still many houses underground and many living underground. In fact they are still building new underground houses, churches, shops, bars etc as it is much cooler in the hot summer, and warmer in the cold winter when you live underground.

After lunch we joined up the a local tour to see some more of the area. First stop was the Cathlolic underground church. Then off to the town and cemetry. There certainly were some sad cases of death here and our tour guide Jimmy knew many of the people burried here. Jimmy seemed to be a bit of a local celebraty. One fellow had spoken so much in life that that had put a metal top with large bolts on his grave to try to stop him talking!

Then off to Mining fields out of town. Here the ground was like hundred of rabbits had doug holes. A real mess, but apparently it is safer to leave the holes open and not filled in for the miners. Not safe if you fall down one, but much safer if you are mining as you simply run into an open chamber, rather than an unstable filled in area that falls on you and collapes and causes a cave in. Here we got also to do a bit of a fosic (noodling they call it).

 Then off to see the moon scape (unfortunately for us, due to the good rain season this year it was covered in grass!), the dog proof fence, not to be confused with the Rabbit proof fence which is in another state.

Also got to drive on a ancient sea bed, in the middle of the desert. Aparently the whole area was covered with water, and where Cooper Pedy is now was the shore where there was a sandy beach. It is the sand that caused the Opals to be formed and infact there are opalised sea creatures found in the mines there. On the other had just a few km's away where the sea floor would have been (and down a few km's lower), there are fosilised sea creatures here. We were no longer able to stop and vist the fosils on the old sea floor as this area had been claimed by the aboriginals (even though they never lived here, just passed through when the weather was ok ie there was water).

Finally we returned to town driving down the Oodnadatta track (well 10km or so).

Back in town we visited the underround bar for a drink, as one must do when in Coober Pedy, cause you can!

Another Big day of Driving up through the desert to get to Coober Pedy, famous for Opals and living underground.

Drive up was a bit more interesting than others recently as the country side changed from something that looked remotley like was usable, to huge salt lakes (and I mean huge, you could not see the other side), to Desert, where there was nothing.

Then in the middle of nowhere, we came across Woomera (well actually Pimba - a service station was on the main road, you had to turn off and drive 10km to get to Woomera). This was an interesting place. I think Woomera, I think detention centre. well there was not one, and has not been one since 2003! So what is Woomera famous for, well it used to be a closed town till 1982, ie you could not visit it as a member of the public, but since it is really in the middle of the desert I would wonder why you would want to visit it. Now it is famous as it is now a defence force base supporting the Woomera Test range.

The test range is used to evaluate land based weapons. It is the largest land based weapons test facility in the world.  It has been used to launch Satellites, and after NASA's facility a Cape Canaveral, Woomera has the highest number of rocket launches in the world!

They also have some of the old rockets, and crashed ones on display, which the kids, and big kids enjoyed. Town though was very dry (no grass in site except one small park).

Continued on our way north to Coober Pedy and the scenery started to change as there were small mines and hills/ mounds on tailings all over the place. Boy man has sure made a mess here!

Yet another 550 Km for the day! 

Today is H's birthday, so of course stared the day with the normal formalities and opening of presents. Then we decided to go visit the local museum, which was very good. Had heaps of stuff for the kids to get involved in as well and pleanty to see, so much we had to break for lunch (shame) and come back again.

Had a bit of a look around town and purchase Pizza for H's birthday treat (his choice) for dinner.

So, today travel to Port Augusta. We thought we would be back in some sort of civisation as there were a few roads on the map today. Well  we were wrong Yes there were towns about every couple of hundred km's but really they were very small towns, often just one shop and that was the petrol garage! Most would be 500 or so people only. we did though find ourselves in the Wheat belt with huge wheat storage areas and trucks every where.  Another big day of driving, yes all of us are getting a bit sick of the driving, and we arrived at Port Augusta after also passing some more iron mining. Funny thing was we passed a town (mine) called Iron Knob, and they had mined away half the hill (which I am guessing was where the name Iron Knob came from). I had to wonder what it will be called in 20 years time when the hill and iron is gone ... maybe "No Iron Knob"???

Checked in a ducked into town to get some milk and bread and found the local Santa Parade was on. So stayed and enjoyed the local floats some lollies and of course Santa! I had not seen a Santa Parade since I was a small child, and none of the kids had seen it but it seems to be a common thing here is SA. Shame we no longer seem to have this sort of thing in NSW or Maitland.

Ok, another day, another 500 Km of not much.  Travell today through to Ceduna. 1st point of interest was crossing the SA / WA border. Here there was a border villiage welcoming you to WA, and checking you were not carrying any thing dangerous (like Tomatoes, Apples etc).  All cars had to stop going west, but us, going east just keep driving, apart from taking the obligatory photos.

For us the SA quarantine was just west of Ceduna. I am unsure what the Fruit and veges law was in the middle as these two stations were about 500 km's apart. Drive took most of the day and unfortunately we stuffed up the time and arrived at the viewing platforms to see the Great Australian bight at 4pm SA time which was closing time. We were greated by a very unhelpful man here who seemed to be too busy watching TV to care if we saw the views or not. Not a great introduction to South Australia and certainly a wake up for us to change our clocks!

Ok today we continue crossing the Nullabour.  Really there is not much to tell on the crossing as there is not much there to see but flat land, normally dirt and sand and not many trees. In places there are no trees for miles. We stopped for the night at Eucla. This was really just a road house and motel set up for the travellers across the Nullabour. There was nothing else much around! It was situated up on a plateau that gave a nice view, and we had to go up as this plateau ran right the sea just after this town.  

Decided we would do the super pit tour this morning and then drive south as far as we could in prep for getting across the Nullabour Plain later in the week (and trying to ensure some internet and phone coverage on the way).

Packed up and parked the car and van in town.

Then on to the tour. Tour was run by and ex miner who was very knowledgeable and good to listen to. We got to vist some of the internal viewing points in the mine and got really close to the large trucks (some might say a bit too close). Also got to see where there leached the gold out from the rock. Not a nice sounding process with Cyanide used. And just think then we wear it on our fingers as rings! Tour was a bit long for Emily but rest of the tribe enjoyed it, especially Harry with all the big truck, diggers and other machines!

After the Tour, lunch at one of the pubs, we just had to try a pub in town. Huge meals, good pub food. Then of course, down to earth as we had to start the drive south.

Drove a couple of hundred km's south and did a free camp on the side of the road on the start of the road across the Nullabour.

Today the car was getting a check up at the Garage, of course even though I booked it in 2 weeks in advance they had no record of the booking. Lucky in the country way they said no worries and checked it over. All well they said, just a bit of oil needed, nothing major.

While they were doing this the kids got their first taste of McDonalds since leaving Lochinvar. You did not think we would make it all the way did you?

Once the car was sorted we grabbed a bit to eat and then when shopping for Harry's birthday which was coming up soon.

Had a drive around town and checked out the public viewing of the super pit (a very very large whole in the ground).  Check out www.superpit.com.au/ .

Back to the park (and dust) and a swim for the kids finished off the day.