THURSDAY 3 JULY 2008

We went through Snowtown where the Bank murders were. When we stopped, I got out of the bus and this guy comes waltzing over with a bright HiVis Vest on and says "Welcome to Hell, - Not really, I'm harmless". He was a bit simple but he was happy to tell us everything. We moved on and headed for Port Augusta to get a few supplies and then head out. We were going to stop just out of Iron Knob. We pulled in there as we had forgotton the scotch. Went to the Pub – they offered that we could stay in the car park and use their power for nothing – but as we didn’t really like the look of the rest of the town (and who knows what lurks in there). So we headed out of town. Didn’t like the camp spots on the road, so we headed for Kimba as the Camps4 Book said there was a place in town with water and toilets. When we arrived it was dark and it took a while but we finally found the park.

WEDNESDAY 2 JULY 2008

Mallala is a nice little country town. Has the necessities, an IGA, Pub, Post Office, Petrol Station, Police Station and a Grain Store. It also has the V8 Supercars racetrack just out of town. Its not a very fancy track – very basic. This morning I thought you ripper, lets fit the bracket and get going, you wouldn’t believe it, the nice old fella had welded the gussets on the wrong side so it wouldn’t fit.
LESSON NO. 4- Nice old man that does job on spot and cheap not necessarily a good thing.







This meant another trip to another engineering joint out of Mallala. The lady at the IGA gave us his number and what a joint. It was huge. Must have had about 20 employees or more. It was Mike Sharman who make Silos, etc. They also had a little hardware store there that had everything and was priced well. Cause it was late afternoon by the time we got sorted, we decided to stay another night at Mallala and head off the next morning.

TUESDAY 1 JULY 2008

After moving on from Talem Bend we headed for Dublin, north west of Adelaide, but as we approached along the freeway coffee beckoned so we pulled over just before the Adelaide Hills. Just as well because after an inspection of a bent bracket on the ‘A’ frame link points it had bent some more so I decided to unhitch the car and have Dianne drive behind until we got to Gawler on the other side of town to have it repaired and if youv’e ever experienced the descent into Adelaide 6 km’s of steep, steep downhill, well I ‘m feeling pretty lucky. The mobile internet has been so useful since starting, we located an Engineering place in Gawler. When we arrived there he realised he couldn’t help us and redirected us to another place around the corner. I had to get Dianne to ring the office number as there was no one to be found. The lady that answered said she was in town at the moment and they were far too busy do anything for us. Just at the same time, I finally got the attention of someone, a fella looked up and pointed to an old fella down the back of this huge shed. The old bloke was more than happy to help. I walked out 10 minutes later with the job completed all for 10 bucks courtesy of this beautiful old man ( probably her father) who would have to have been 85+. Then we headed for Mallala.

Stopped at Mallala footy ground for the night so I could repair and refit modified bracket in the morning (as it was already scotch time). (picture is their beautiful oval - the dogs enjoyed running around there). We met some other travellers here. Bob and Heather were heading for Coober Pedy to meet some friends and travel the Ann Beadell Highway. They had a throw together set up as they just sold their other camper. They had a Landcruiser tray with a cub camper trailer attached on the body. It suit their purpose for this trip and it actually wasn’t a bad set up.

MONDAY 30TH JUNE 2008

I had had enough by about 5.30 am, and decided I was getting up and getting ready to move. When we were checking all the connections, etc, we noticed one of the brackets on the car that we use with the A Frame towing system was a bit bent. We decided we would see how it went and get it fixed down the road a bit further. We got back on the road and headed up the Coorong towards Talem Bend.

We were about 19kms from Salt Creek and Steve notice the bus was surging. The tank showed just under half full but we soon learnt this was not correct. LESSON NO. 3 – Don’t trust the reading on the fuel guage. We pulled into a roadside stop 14kms out and the bus died. So we unhitched the car and Steve took the Jerry Cans into town and filled them up. When he got back, we put the fuel in and of course, the bus didn’t want to start. We had to try and bleed the injectors. Steve made a couple of calls to Jock at Nth East to get some advice. After about half an hour of cursing and stress, the bus just would not fire. It was so close. So Steve went back into Salt Creek to see if someone there could help. They put us in touch with a guy called Dave and he said he would come out but it would take about an hour and, with the price of fuel these days, would have to cost at least $60.00. Steve told him to come, we weren’t worried about the cost, we just wanted to get back on the road. Dave finally turned up about 1-1/2 hours later with a few squirts of aero start and some more bleeding it only took him approx 15 mins and we got it firing. We paid him $100 and said buy yourself some beers“don’t worry about the receipt” we were just happy to get back on the road. We got to about 7kms east of Talem Bend and found a nice road side stop and stayed the night and had the best sleep so far.

SUNDAY 29TH JUNE 2008

We decided to stay there an extra day (Steve was hoping to get some surf fishing in but the weather didn’t agree). We spent the day organising a few things.
I took the dogs for a walk up the beach. On Sunday night a storm wipped up. The wind was howling across the ocean and rocking the bus.

SATURDAY 28TH JUNE 2008

Today we headed off to Mt Gambier. We had to do a load of laundry and wanted to get a spare battery for the video camera. Whilst in Mt Gambier we had a look at the Cave Gardens in the centre of town. There are caves and sink holes everywhere around there.


From here we headed for The Granites (a camping spot by the beach that had three big boulders sticking out of the sand that looked like beached whales). We had to go through Kingston SE which was a real one horse (hotel) town. We went into the pub to get some drinks and when we walked in the door, the three guys in the bar said “Look, visitors in town”. I don’t think they get to see them very often in the middle of winter.

We finally reached the Granites. It was a beautiful spot – shame about the weather. We had an ocean view from the front windscreen. It was just a bit windy and cold.

FRIDAY 27TH JUNE 2008

We headed into Portland to find a fibreglass repair kit together with a few other things we had to do including topping up the water. We found a VicRoads office so we handed in the plates off my old Commodore (that we had sold the day we left). You know the saying “you can’t go anywhere”, well Steve was standing in the queue to hand in the plates and the guy in front of him was Risky, a mate of Steve’s sister Christine and her hubby Bob. He had set off about 15 years ago and has just relocated from Alice to Portland.

We headed off from there and stopped for lunch and a shower in the pines along the way. We decided not to stay there overnight as there was a sign to say there was 1080 bait in the area and didn’t want to risk it with the dogs. We travelled through Nelson onto Port McDonnell and finally stopped at a rest area that was 1km off the main road at Little Blue Lake. Little Blue Lake is a water filled sink hole. It was once a cave but the top has collapsed to the bottom. The main Blue Lake is up in Mt Gambier.


It was a nice, quiet area until 4.15am the next morning when a few of the local hoons thought they would come in and yell and toot their horn. But they disappeared just as quick so there wasn’t any trouble.