All things must end

So this post finishes off our trip to South Australia.  It covers our last day based at Glenelg and the drive back to Carwoola.

Friday 25 May 2018

We began the day as always with a dog walk.  As this was to be our last morning walk and we had nothing else planned for the day, we made the walk a little longer than we have been doing.

We also changed arrangements by crossing to the EastSide of the Patawolonga and looking back at the reflections of the houses on the far side.

 We then headed a bit North before crossing Military Rd and heading to the beach.  On the site of what used to be Marineland.  The Surf Lifesaving organisation for SA have their HQ here.  The sculpture looked quite pleasant ...

.. but got to "interesting" when looked at closely.

• Why is the figure second from the left wearing a skirt?  Is this a mother rushing to pull her toddler out of an unfenced pool?  Could the designer not think of any other way to show the figure is female?
• Is the atrophied right leg on the fourth figure representing people with a disability?
• Do they now only rescue people by running?  (To make the point another way, why don't they have figures swimming, paddling or in a Zodiac, which are IMHO the main business of lifesaving?)

They are still of course attractive images, and perhaps the last point is taken care of by the images on the building?

 On the top of the dune the 4 experimental wind turbines are still present.  They were all motionless today as the wind was dead calm.

In case you wonder about the strange blue colour in many of the photos from today, there is no need to panic.  It is a natural phenomenon called "the sky".  It was very enjoyable to not have solid grey cloud!

There were large mounds of seaweed on the beach!

When I first migrated to Adelaide we used to go to this stretch of beach as it was not heavily used.  I had thought it was due to it being under the flight path for planes landing and taking off from the airport, about 1km away.  Others thought it was because the punters had to walk ~100m through sandhills to get there, rather than parking on a road and walking 10m down steps.

A few bits of interesting public art have been installed along the esplanade.

 Surfs up - only about 20cm, but it was up.

 Some more reflections in the Pat.

 As we toddled back through the 'burb we noticed that the baby hire SUV had gone - possibly making a delivery somewhere.  In the same street the tradies were back, possibly even more than yesterday.

Being a nosey sod I asked what they were up to.  It turns out they were installing a node for NBN Co..  No wonder the project is so expensive if it takes a mob like this 2 days and a minimum of 6 blokes to install each node!

Here is the total walk.

We then then put in some energy to packing a fair bit of our stuff ready for departure tomorrow and went for a stroll along the Torrens Linear Park.  We used the opportunity to fill up with dieselat what we expected to be better prices than Ouyen or Wagga.  I then discovered an establishment called Dulwich Bakery (apparently a chain in Adelaide).  They did a Chunky Steak Pepper pie which was very good indeed: I rated it as a 9+ - the pepper taste could have been stronger and the crust possibly a bit moister, but it was pushing the envelope of 10!

The start was amusing seeing these horses wading the Creek: the leader stood in the water for some time stirring with one hoof and we couldn't work out why it did this!

 One of my objectives on this outing was to photograph a Musk Lorikeet.  They were most uncooperative but eventually I managed to capture this snap.  It has taken a while to work out the pose of the bird because the red stripes are in a strange position.  I think it has actually got its head twisted so it's almost hanging vertically.

After this walk Frances needed some retail therapy so was dropped off at  Harbour Town and Tammy and I went to check cormorant diversity on the breakwater at Glenelg.  All three black and white species (Little Pied, Pied and Black-faced) were present but neither Little Black nor Great.

Returning to the house it was time to load most of the car so that we could get an early start.  This done under the supervision of the standard poodles across the road!

Here is a photo of the house.

After all of this I was pretty knackered  so was early to bed.  I couldn't seem to get the temperature right, and was able to worry about villains breaking into the car and stealing our kit.  So a very poor night's sleep.

Saturday 26 May 2018

We were both awake at 0430 so got up, loaded the rest of our stuff into the car, took Tammy for a toilet patrol and were on our way by about 0525.

The road works at South Road weren't as chaotic as yesterday (no cops, for a start) but still almost incomprehensible.  At least we got through in the direction we wanted and headed for the Hills.  Eventually got on to the Expressway and as we approached the Eastern side of the Hills could see a reddish tinge in the sky.  This got gradually more and more impressive (clouds do have some benefits) and Frances got this snap somewhere between Murray Bridge and Tailem Bend.

 As a result of the camera being set on auto-flash and the windows being a tad grubby, other photos were not that good.

I drove to Ouyen, our traditional first stop 400km into the drive and then Frances took over.  I dozed for a bit and then took a few photos.  The aim of this one is to show the mallee growth form of the eucalypts, with several stems branching out of the ligotuber.

 The road is called the Mallee Highway and here is a photo of a traffic jam on same.

 I also took a photo of the display of fuel consumption on the car.  It only shows 4 hours so the very low start point is where we were mucking about going on the very hilly and winding road to the start of the freeway.  It is then quite stable.

 As we got close to the Murray at Piangil a salt pan was visible: almost dry.

 Despite this someone has planted a massive pistachio orchard around Piangil.  It seemed to run for at least 10km and went well over the (sand)hills and far away.  My guess is at least several hundred hectares.  As the info page says " The water from the Murray River provides the source of irrigation." Together with the vast expansion of the cotton paddocks on the Hay Plain no wonder that the irrigators are objecting to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

On the opposite side of the river the paddocks looked hard to distinguish from the salt pan.

We stopped for a driver swap about halfway from Balranald to Hay where I took an image of the Bluebush between cotton paddocks.  In case you wonder what a flat line looks like, check the horizon.

We had developed some theories about the emus changing their behaviour as a result of the cotton farms .  We came across several groups of 1 or 2 in the first few kilometres from Balranald and then started to come into the cotton, near Maude.  There we spotted a big flock: Frances estimated at least 20, perhaps 30.

Frances took over again just after Narrandera and I took a snap of the info display which is now really showing what steady fuel consumption looks like. I think the little uptick (low consumption) at the start is going through Piangil and Tooleybuc at 80km/h and the downtick is probably accelerating away from the driver swap!

 The two fill-ups at Ouyen and Wagga gave 9.15 and 9.33l/100km respectively.

Because we were both a little tired by this stage I decided to change our normal route on rural roads from Murrimbateman, rather twisty and wildlife ridden, and came into Canberra.  The road works around the light rail project were appalling, but fade into insignificance compared to South Road in Adelaide.

We recorded some temperatures as we drove along: it was quite impressive to see how much colder the inland was.  We'd heard a forecast maximum of 23^oC for Hay but thought it ridiculous when we were at Pinaroo.  However it was a nice sunny day and the forecast was right on the money.

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