Wednesday collage

We left Crystal Brook this morning and travelled to Port Augusta where we called in to visit the Australian Arid Lands Botanic Gardens at the suggestion of blipper BanksiaMan. Absolutely loved it but didn’t have time to see much, one of the walks was 4.5 hours around the tracks. I saw enough to realise I know very little about the arid plants of our country. It it renowned for the eremophilia collection.  Well worth a visit for a whole day.

Next stop was Spud’s Roadhouse where we are staying. Pimba is a railway settlement ( when they were building the transcontinental railway) and near the township of Woomera. This was a closed settlement as they did rocket launching and testing in the past but apparently it is now open to tourists. Pimba has a population of 40 but there must be hundreds here tonight. All the caravans and RVs are lined up like in a car parking lot. I’ve never seen anything like it before. There is nothing except for the roadhouse where diesel is $2.39/litre. No trees. 

I really enjoyed the trip up here through flat treeless terrain, dotted with unusual hills and salt lakes full of water. There was a sign “welcome to the outback” so I guess we are now officially in the outback. We take it in turns to drive an hour each.