Port Augusta - Streaky Bay

Our time in Port Augusta in +40⁰C was spent trying to escape the heat – so we rode early in the morning and cooled down in the air conditioned shops or caravan park swimming pool.  As advised by his specialist, Alan had his broken thumb X-Rayed here and all agreed that it’s repairing nicely.  He’s allowed to get it wet twice a day, so covers it in plastic for showers, but swims with it uncovered.  I’m constantly surprised at how well he gets by with only one and a bit hands, especially riding his bike.

While we peddled around Port Augusta we noticed either graffiti or stickers on cars in town farewelling ‘Deano’.  After an easy search on Google, we learnt that Dean was a local 18 year old who was king hit and killed by a 19 year old on New Year’s Eve in Streaky Bay.  Sadly he died and the guy is now on manslaughter charges.  Our next stop was Streaky Bay on the Eyre Peninsula – normally a very quiet fishing town loved by tourists. It’s hard to imagine how the town coped with such a tragedy.

We stopped off in Kimba –halfway across Australia, and downed our sandwiches before the bread turned to toast.  It was 42.5⁰ when we arrived in Streaky Bay, so after pulling our cozzies on over sticky sweaty bodies we opted for a swim before tackling any work, other than plugging in the power and turning on the air conditioner.

The sweat was pouring off us as we tried to hammer the pegs into the rock hard ground.  Suddenly Santa turned up like an apparition – curly white hair, moustache and beard - dressed in his summer outfit of speedos and thongs with and a beer in hand.  He was a dead ringer for the real thing and only missing a big belly.  He told us that the office have a drill with a tungsten drill bit to bore holes into the solid ground.  So with Alan’s 1 ½ hands and my two, we managed to drill a few holes into the ground to put pegs in for the awning. 

Santa and Mrs Claus double as “Cuddles & Co” travelling music show, and each afternoon we’re treated to some great foot tapping music while they strum and sing their way through their repertoire, accompanied by anyone else in the caravan park that brought an instrument with them on their holidays.

There are always characters wherever you go, and the nastiest moved in next door to us.  The ‘van’ was a combination of a horse trailer and workmen’s accommodation with the owner a cruel man in filthy clothes who claimed they’d been attacked by Aborigines while camped on the Nullarbor.  His poor wife couldn’t seem do the right thing and anytime we saw them he was yelling at her and throwing equipment on the ground in disgust.  Their arrival made such an impact that as soon as they had the van in place (diagonally across the site) and went out for dinner, people wandered over to take photos.  We managed a peek inside later and found a new side-by-side fridge, huge washing machine etc.

After such incredibly hot weather, the temperature dropped to 23⁰ overnight.  We’ve ridden our bikes all over Streaky Bay and had a lovely lunch at the only restaurant in town, and dinner at the pub.  Then the weather turned nasty, so instead of heading bush 2 days ago to our next stop, we were lucky enough to keep our site for a couple more days. 

The sun’s out today so it’s time to get rolling to Cactus Beach.  Hopefully we won’t get blown away there