As Russell Coight Would Say…..

Well, it’s been an eventful three months going nowhere fast. The trials and tribulations confessed in our last post were only some of the ingredients of the cornucopia of emotional up’s and downs. Two weddings and a funeral, grief, joy, mishaps, missteps and medical attention. Yet as housebound as we have been, had it not been for our dear friends Barry and Nardia Penney who were so kind and generous with their hospitality, we may have succumbed to the pressure and hit the abort button. They gave us a safe house and refuge, time to emotionally re-group without the daily drama of where would we be sleeping tonight?

Barry and Nardia are an extraordinary couple, so in sync with their commitment to the environment and their lifetime project of creating a green space legacy in a rapidly urbanising landscape. Not only acres of natives but a fruit and veg garden that Nigella Lawson would be oozing over (as only she can). We all knew our departure was imminent. As the day drew closer our familiar excitement started to bubble up. Their excitement was getting their house back and not getting that knock on the door for something or other. On the last night we had a big nosh up of noodles followed by some “so bad for you” dessert. We went back to continue or packing which was going slower than normal. Well, it HAD been three months and we were were defs out of practice.

We had been toying with the idea of doing the Flinders Ranges for a couple of months, but in a moment of inspiration, we thought Nah….lets go to Darwin….time to hit the road. So, at 8:30 on Saturday morning, we bid farewell to our legendary hosts to start our “climb” up to Darwin. First stop was Port Augusta some 270 klm’s away. You only have to be on the road for less than two hours, to find Dorothy McKellar’s ‘wide, brown land’. Endless brown and barren paddocks followed us like some harbinger of bad times, till we got to Port Augusta. For those laptop travelers, Port Augusta looks big on the map, but really just a smallish country town with a drinking problem. (maximum cask size is 2 litres and I’ll need to see your ID sir).

I had picked out a truck stop to spend our first night but the gates and pin number entry requirements put paid to that. Luckily Tamika and Google have this co-dependent relationship and she quickly found a free RV site 13 clicks west of town. It wasn’t signposted and it was bare of any of the minimum creature comforts. Just dirt and salt bush….but the views!!!

You could not get a more panoramic vista of the gateway to the outback than from our vantage point. Below us Port Augusta twinkled under the deep shadows of the Flinders Ranges and to our left, the endless horizon fanned out into a haze of deepening purple and indigo. We sat quietly with our G & T’s watching the night sky unfurl it’s stars, talking quietly about our new adventure and feeling we were truly home again.