Port Augusta

An interesting travel day today as we zig-zagged our way to Port Augusta via a string of little towns, some quaint and historically charming, others lucky to warrant a dot on the map.

We stopped just outside the town of Burra at a worn out old homestead made famous on the cover of Midnight Oil’s Diesel & Dust album.

We learned about Goyder's Line as we crossed it - a line that runs roughly east-west across South Australia and, in effect, joins places with an average annual rainfall of 10 inches. North of Goyder's Line, annual rainfall is usually too low to support cropping, with the land being suitable only for grazing. Who knew?

We also navigated past our first quadruple road train. Yikes!

South Australia is clearly leading our nation in renewable energy as we passed two giant solar farms and multiple wind turbines. Plus we discovered Port Augusta has our only SunDrop which uses solar energy to desalinate water.

Tonight’s accommodation is at Discovery Park Port Augusta, which I’m pleased to say is punching above its weight for this town. It’s pretty full too and we’ve met some fellow travellers from all states. Wish us luck with the ‘locals’ tonight…

Fun fact: Port Augusta is known as the Crossroads of Australia. If you head north on the Stuart Highway, some 2,722 km later you will be driving into Darwin. Head west on the Eyre Highway and 2,390 km (after you have crossed the Nullarbor Plain) you will reach Perth. Head east, via Broken Hill, and 1,561 km later you’ll be in Sydney and, almost as an afterthought, you can head south and in a mere 310 km you’ll reach Adelaide. Port Augusta really does sit at a crossroads and, by strange serendipity, the roads really do head to the primary points of the compass – north, south, east and west.Read more