The apartment we stayed at was absolutely gorgeous.
It was called The Majestic Oasis, and being Port Augusta, we were a little dubious as to just how much of an oasis it might turn out to be, but we were most pleasantly surprised when we got there.
Two bedrooms, air-conditioned, fully equipped kitchen, back door looked out over the Spencer Gulf, and once you stepped out the back door, it was about 10 metres to the gate to the swimming pool.
Max was pretty stoked with that!
The thing that really surprised us though was the information supplied by the receptionist that the Port Augusta council was not hosting any fireworks for New Year’s Eve! Say what? Apparently, they’d spent their budget on our festivities throughout the year and were happy to let Port Pirie and Whyalla have their fireworks displays.
I’d already driven in excess of 500km for the day and didn’t particularly feel like driving either the 180km return trip to Port Pirie nor the 150km return trip to Whyalla just to see some fireworks!
So, we decided we’d spend a quiet night in the luxury of our apartment and watch the Sydney fireworks on the tellie. As luck would have it, the atmospheric conditions were not favourable, and the reception kept breaking up.
Oh well, we’ve seen fireworks before.
So, 2013 is upon us already.
We packed up and hit the road out through the Flinders Ranges (a spot we plan to come back to at some point in the future) and headed twoards Broken Hill. Thankfully, we’re spending two nights in Broken Hill, which means a day off from the driving. Of course, we’ll still be driving around looking at stuff, but that’s a lot different to just sitting on a highway at 120k’s an hour for hours on end.
Along the way, we stopped at Alligator Gorge (first 3 images).
Then, we passed through a little town (actually, ‘town’ is probably being a bit generous) called Mannahill, whose railway station was just beautiful.
We rolled into Broken Hill at around 6pm to find that it was still north of 40ºC.
Yeah, we woosed out again!
We booked ourselves a cabin in the caravan park, unpacked what we needed for the night, and promptly headed for the pool.
After a refreshing dip, we drove out to Silverton to check out the iconic pub.
The pub is decorated with a lot of memorabilia from the films that have been shot there, including the Australian classic, Mad Max 2 (known in the U.S. as “The Road Warrior”).
Max was keen to visit the Mad Max 2 Museum, but it had already closed for the day, so we’ll come back out tomorrow to check that out.
Leaving Silverton to return to Broken Hill, we finally saw a camel in the wild. We’ve done about 8000km so far, and FINALLY we’ve seen a camel.
After dinner, we drove up to the lookout above Broken Hill and watched the fading light, which included the obligatory family portrait on the oversized park bench!
Day eighteen
