We packed up early and got on the road for the short drive to Parachilna “town” where there is good phone reception (which is lost about 500 metres away!). The boys had their phone lessons with Miss Swan and hopefully our chanting of times-tables while driving had paid off – “two ones are two; two twos are four; two threes are….” etc etc”.
We got back on the “Outback Highway” – keen to keep heading “out the back” but the looming heat – which we had found a short window of reprieve from – was not what we were keen on – so we were southbound……destination: Eyre Peninsular. We looked at the maps and realised that the Eyre Peninsular is a massive chuck of Australia – any ideas of exploring it in a few days were quickly diminishing.
We drove through Port Augusta loading a full tank of fuel – 110 litres of their finest diesel – when we see a cheap price and the tank is down it’s a substantial amount of money we can save if there’s a cheap price or a 4cent woolies discount.
We headed down the highway towards Whyalla. We headed out to Fitzgerald Bay to check out the free campsites out there. They were designed for caravans and maybe hard-floor camper trailers – we didn’t see a spot that suited a tent so we back-tracked and continued in to Whyalla. We drove around and decided on the Discovery caravan park on the foreshore. We set up camp on a grassy site which had power and water. A nice camp kitchen was 30metres away – pizza oven, fish smoker, TV, dart board…..? They thought of everything. Jumping pillow for the boys and they quickly found friends – Chace who we’d camped near a few weeks back at Mallala, Campbell and Lily (same ages as the boys) from the BigBlueYonder crew from Canberra, Riley and Keiran from the Cruisin’theCountry team. Spag Bol for an easy dinner and we settled in for the night.
JALC-OZ-2018 