This is the second time I’ve done this post because some numpty (aka me)  deleted it before I uploaded it so excuse me if its slightly out of sequence.

After having a nice quiet night in Ippinitchie campground, we woke and headed in towards todays objective, Port Pirie. We took in the little town of Laura again and then headed out to Beetaloo Reservoir, up a bumpy, windy, twisty, dusty track that got narrower and narrower and finally reaching the end, parked up and could see the wall.  The only walk track was the goat track that took you up to the viewing platform. I laughed when actuall we got up there to find a family of goats looking at us as if to say ” wtf?”. But we braved the screaming wind and took some pictures and then got blown back down…. this is a known fishing spot, but good luck casting into that wind!

After that itcwas into town, shopping, and a general look around, we had been there only a few days before but it felt like weeks.

We looked at our intended camp behind a pub, but being straight across from. The regional hospital’s ED we thought nope, so instead, we booked into the clubs campground for $7 a night behind a local footy club’s sports bar. The host had booked a table for dinner for the campground and said we were welcome to join them. So we toddled over had some beer and an average meal at an average price, then about 9 came home to sleep, and that’s when the storm broke, lightning, thunder, and heavy rain.

So when it rains Little Bus becomes quite musical. Imagine if you took 20 different metal saucepans and dropped big rain drops on them, ok? So now imagine that you are inside them and that’s what Little Bus sounds like.  But we snuggled down and drifted while listening to a rain orchestrated musical, while Little Bus became Little Boat.

Next morning there were huge puddles, so it had been a decent rain. We headed into town to do some touristy things as it was Friday. Little did we know everything was closed.

Tourist information…. closed. Museum…… closed. Art gallery….. closed. Virtual reality shark cage dive… you guessed it closed. So we walked around admiring all the closed buildings and stopped as a huge locomotive drove itself past McDonalds and across the main street to the silos. Nobody seemed concerned, but it just looked weird. We half expected it to go through the Macca’s drivethrough it was that close.

After that we drove over the “bridge to nowhere” ( you can google that but it really does go to nothing) then left town, and drove out to Crystal Brook, a town not unlike York back in WA. We wandered around in and out of some  antique stores and met an African American who was trying to convince us he was 70, not the 50 he looked. But when his daughter declared “well you have to remember ‘Black don’t crack!’” It just cracked us up.

After a wander around, it was out to Bowman Park, where we spent the night after a walk around the grounds of the old settlement.