Sheep in fields near Salt Creek
Today was again another travel day as we moved closer to the Limestone Coast south of Adelaide. We left early this morning and were into Adelaide by shortly after 9 am. We refueled at a service station on the outskirts and since it had a car wash, washed our motorhome. It needed it badly as it has collected quite a bit of bugs and road tar over the last weeks.
Adelaide is not well designed for driving through. As far as we could see from our maps you almost have to drive right through the centre of the city to cross it. We planned to go around the very centre by going from the A1 highway to the A21 to skirt central Adelaide. That would have been a good plan if I hadn’t made a wrong turn. We were on the A21 when I saw a sign that read “A21” pointing to the right, so made the turn. Unfortunately the sign didn’t say “A21 West” which would have made it clear that since I was already on the A21, I didn’t need to make a turn to follow it. We ended up zig-zagging through the centre of Adelaide and eventually made it back onto the A21, but it would have been a lot easier if the roads were better signed. In any case it still wasn’t a very quick way to get through the city, until we got back onto the M1 which is a good freeway heading east.
Right away as you leave Adelaide the road climbs for almost 600 metres in just a few kilometres. Our motorhome had to work to get up the hills. However we were doing better than another truck, as we passed it. Mostly though it was just other people passing us.
We stopped at the town centre parking area at Tailem Bend for lunch. There is a small park here with washrooms. Like much of Australia their public washrooms are remarkably clean. Enid bought a bottle of orange juice at the store across the street. It was pretty hot today, the air conditioner barely keeping us at a reasonable temperature while we drove, so the orange juice dissappeared fairly quickly. It got to over 40 °C again today.
We stopped here at the Gemini Downs site which is a working farm where they have also developed some tourist facilities. The nicest thing about it is that they have a small unheated and covered swimming pool. Since we got here just after 2 pm we spent most of the afternoon in the pool building, switching from water to keep cool (it actually felt cold when you got into the water initially) to sitting in the shaded building reading books. We spoke to a family that are camped right next to us when they were in the pool with their children. He was a “postie” so we learned a bit more about Australian occupations and lifestyles, including that their minimum wage is about $18 per hour (casual labor) but that housing is very expensive.
Since this is a farm I walked around a bit after supper as it started to cool off. I hoped that I could get to the Coorong National Park across the road, but the bush is too thick to get through and down to the water’s edge. Instead I photographed a number of the plants and animals on the farm.