LANGHORNE CREEK - near Victor Harbor, South Australia

Cliche I know, but talk about chalk and cheese. Langhorne Creek was everything Murray Bridge Tourist Park wasn't. Although it was a free camping area, it was really nice! It was quiet, leafy and had a bunch of fantastic travellers passing through. We stayed nearly a week while we waited for the new solar panels to be delivered from Queensland, allowing us to share a few 'happy hours' with a couple of gregarious groups of grey nomads. They kept the kids entertained for hours every day with games of cricket, daggy grandpa jokes, funny face competitions and general shenanigans.

The Murraylands are a beautiful part of South Oz. We spent a couple of days exploring the Victor Harbor region, interspersed with lazy days around the camp site. A short walk past paddocks of fruiting vineyards led us to Langhorne Creek's 'blink and you'll miss it' town centre. Although small, it had all the necessities for country living - an inviting old pub, a local store with milk and bread, a mechanic, a local hall, a primary school and a small but well equiped playground.

One lunchtime we were greeted at the campsite by a man who could have talked the leg off a chair. He wanted to know whether we would mind if his wife put on an impromptu concert. He assured us her voice was incredible and the songs would be known to all. After much chin wagging and story telling, it turned out that his wife had only recently decided to begin her singing career at the tender age of 58 and still suffered from terrible nerves. She had taken to playing these 'pop-up' gigs at campsites to help her build confidence. To my untrained ear, her singing was beautiful, nailing renditions of Hallelujah, Ava Maria and Elvis! She also sung one self composed song, which chronicled her emotional memories of growing up in her hometown of Tailem Bend.

With good advice from travellers who'd come from the west, we decided to skip the Yorke and Eyre Peninsulas despite it being one of SA's major drawcards for us. Gentle sea breezes had given way to 80-100km winds, care of the storms barelling across the Bight. The general consensus was that it was all rather unpleasant! (We'd been lucky enough to miss a huge storm that hit Adelaide and surrounding regions on the 22nd Jan- see radar picture below. We received buckets of rain one night and could see the massive thunderstorm hitting close by but we fortunately didn't cop the damaging winds) Instead we decided to start making our way towards the Nullarbor. There didn't look to be much between Adelaide and Ceduna for us to see if we weren't detouring south so we settled into 2 days of long driving - 850km of blacktop! The first day took us through Port Pirie and Port Augusta. The lanscape was quite dramatic with sea on one side of the highway that seemed to knit seamlessly with flat, sparsely vegetated plains stretching a few kilometres before slamming into the spectacular Flinders Ranges.

We pulled up stumps about 6.30 on Thusday 28th Jan at the strange but interesting ghost town of Iron Knob. (see next post)

Just for giggles, here's some of the observations we've made so far;

South Australian's are a patient bunch - to conserve fuel and be kind to Bilbo the Prado, we tend to travel about 90 - 95km p/hr despite the speed limit often being 110km. The locals don't seem to mind and often happily tuck in behind us for miles before overtaking (if they can be bothered). Victorian's would simply tailgate and toot every 200m!
There's an etiquette for acknowledging other fellow caravaners/campers on the road. A simple raising of the index finger off the steering wheel suffices but you'll sometimes get a wrist flicking 4-finger salute, a peace sign or even a full blown wave. Just as we thought we'd mastered that new protocol, we found in the more remote areas, you're expected to give the same acknowledgement to every car!! I just need to figutre out how far from a town you stop/start waving to everyone - seems to be about 50km but that's rather rubbery.
South Australian's are a bit more dog friendly than Victorian's. They allow dogs on beaches with fewer restrictions and don't seem to mind them in camping areas. Well done SA!
The locals still talk funny!!

(Hover over the images below for details...i'm still trying to navigate this software and can't seem to find a reliable way to add photo captions!)