Tuesday, 10/16 Side Road near Ceduna to Roadside rest just south of Quorn

A long day of driving

    Australia is a big country and we knew we better get a move on it so after having breakfast at the shore front park in Ceduna we spent the whole day driving. Along the way we passe Iron Knob, a giant mound of tailings that used to be a mountain. High grade iron ore was discovered there in the late 1800's, and Broken Hill Proprietary dug it all up and sent it to the town of Whyalla for processing. That mine is played out but there are other mountains in the area that are being reduced to tailings. Iron Knob now looks like this;

All that is left are tailings

     Nearing Port Augusta I noticed someone following closely behind and waving at us. I wondered what I was doing wrong, probably driving too slowly (the experiment of driving 100 kph (66 mph) instead of our usual 80 kph (50 mph) cut our mpg by over 25%, which is pretty bad to start with). They finally passed us and we recognized a couple we'd seen two times before, in the Warrambungles in New South Wales and at Broken Hill. We were to see them two more times, once at a grocery store in Port Augusta, then in the small railroad town of Quorn at the southern end of the Flinders Range. They invited us to visit them at their home near Brisbane when we're there in December.

     We restocked in Port Augusta, then took out dinner from a small restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet. We were hoping for oysters, but they were out of those , so we had fried King George whiting and gar filets with fires and ate them in our car. The fish was unremarkable, but the chips were a nice treat.

     Then on the road for a half hour where we found a rest area to spend the night.