Spencer Gulf - up north.

Wonderful terrain here. Spencer Gulf is shallow and wide, stretching south into the Great Australian Bight. The east and west sides are lined with ranges. The west side is edged by the Middleback range. While disjointed and at times defined by single peaks, it contains the massive mining interest of Iron Knob, Middleback itself, Mt Whyalla and Iron Barron. Incredible!
The east is home of the South Flinders Range which is stunning in both rising and setting sun. From Sea level adjacent to the gulf they shoot straight up to 850meters.
On the west side as we head north the town of Whyalla looks set to burst its seams (reports are that it has some vibrancy).
We stayed briefly at the northern end of the Gulf in Port Augusta which has a different story to tell, and there were many more beers an skittles in that story a few years back. Today, what we saw was a little depressing. Of recent times there was a mini commercial boom during the construction of the solar and wind turbine farms. There is nothing mini about those. We saw wind farms along both coasts of the Gulf. The Port Augusta Renewable Energy Park on its own has 50 × 4.2 MW wind turbines, and 107 MW solar capacity installed by an Aussie/Spanish consortium on 54 km2. Stage 2 is yet to start. Amazing to see - and fills one with optimism that coal might actually be on the way out.
We had a visit into Port Agusta town it was sad and closed on a Sunday afternoon. However we had a little win when old mate and his son were playing acoustic guitars at the pub. Don’t know much about old mate, but his son has recently played in the Santana Band. Country flavoured quality jam session.Leggi altro