Trains, aligators, wine and oranges

Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 10:14pm

After another lateish start (we are glad to be arriving back home tomorrow) we headed out of Port Augusta towards Renmark, but of course we couldn’t go direct.

Heading out of town we followed the course of the old railway line towards Quorn, the terminus of the Pichi Richi Railway, an operating heritage railway that runs between Quorn and Port Augusta. We spotted many places for photo opportunities, but without a train, there was no reason to stop. It would be an interesting place to come back during school holidays, when they run steam trains on the line every day.

After a brief look around Quorn we headed over to the back of Mount Remarkable National Park to have a look at Aligator Gorge. Unfortunately the weather was dull and we didn’t see anything spectacular. Of course it was also quite busy and we had a hard time finding a parking spot.

Our next stop was at Clare for lunch. While this gives its name to the Clare Valley, known for Riesling wines, we didn’t stop at any wineries. We did see a F/A-18 circling above the road for a short distance, hopefully it was captured on the video. Our path also took us through Kapunda, Australia’s first successful metal mine, to view Map the Miner, a large statue of a miner.

The last part of the day followed the Murray River from Morgan to Renmark. Although we didn’t need to cross the river, we felt required to use a ferry to cross over, but then used a bridge to cross back. Along the way we detoured via Berri to get a photo of the, now closed, Big Orange. Apparently the biggest orange (of all the big oranges) in Australia.

Tomorrow is the drive home, probably via Mildura, Ouyen, Whycheproof and Bendigo.

Tagged with: road trip