Here we are in Quorn,which is' the best little quorner of the  Flinders.' Hard as it is to make up catch phrases that is nowhere as imaginative as 'Iron Knob,what a hole'.
After travelling up the Spencer Gulf and staying at Whyalla overnight we headed up to Quorn for the weekend.
Whyalla is an iron-ore loading port with over a hundred years of ferric oxide patina on less than beautiful houses arranged in suburbs around missing nuclei. The town centre nuclei is Hummock Hill overlooking the Gulf and the port.

In Whyalla  we made a point of visiting the Maritime museum with it's high and dry corvette  HMAS Whyalla, which we found interesting and redolent of imperial attitudes to the crew. The museum was good in that it gave a decent view of the area without being preachy.

Amazingly when we last passed through Port Augusta in 2004 we got into a huge tail-back from roadworks at the two lane bridge. The heritage listing should be on its way, the workers seem sure of tenure.

Quorn is the home of the famous Picchi Ricchi Railway, we have a lot of photos of steam and diesel locos and the sweet little railway station.

We're doing the tourist bit, including a tour of the railway workshops. We are staying 3 nights and also aim to get our tyres fixed Monday am. Tip: Don't buy Federal tyres, they changed the handling from tall go-kart to pin-ball on a trawler. (We have a slow leak on rear tyre, almost flat after 3 days here).

Being the end of the campfire season the campground is packed with walkers as they make the most of the last days of the month.

Tomorrow, Monday, we hope, after the tyre business, to head for Peterborough. Like many SA towns it had a name change in the Great War, Petersburgh was too German.
The country is red and burnt dry, the best thing is that the stone has been split by the weather into perfect building blocks. Sadly SA has the mania for fibro sheet big time!
The SA colony was started with only free settlers and Wendy remarked that they do seem to be short, physically that is, and now that I look down, it's true!

South Australia

Hello! Back again after going through a shadow of non-coverage, optus doesn't work for vast areas  but we kept getting, "where are you?' from our telstra conns.
After Coolgardie,pictured right,which is much the best town to visit in the Goldfields, we went through  Norseman. Named after a horse which scuffed the ground and found gold, it is now a strange little town with fuel retailers for E W trucks. We had "Norseman burgers" and I  think I know where the meat came from. Crossing the Nullarbor we stopped just before the WA/SA border at Eucla and finally saw the famous old telegraph station. We stayed overnight at the lovely,quiet very reasonably priced camp ground ($20/powered site, $1 for a shower)

We carried onto Penong and stayed 2 nights, previously we thought this a nice place,but it is a scruffy truck stop where trucks are idled for hours next to the campground. SA redeemed itself with Murphy's Haystacks, a strange rock formation (just south of Streaky Bay) with overnight facilities.

SA has some very odd drivers and is soo different to WA.
We spent last night at Farm Beach, so called because 'the fishermen use tractors to beach their boats'.Not quite 1 star.

After a quick stop in Port Lincoln we are finally in Tumby Bay. We were astounded to see that the pharmacy was celebrating 50yrs of being operated by the Hibble family. So, Ralph maybe contact tiffanyhibble@bigpond.com  for comparisons of genealogy? Whilst chatting they suddenly realised that their ancestors arrived in Aus 100years ago tomorrow!

Although we don't plan on using this transport tomorrow we're heading north up the Eyre peninsula.

Wednesday 19th

Today we say goodbye to our Western connections at Coolgardie and finally head east. The last week was taken up entirely with the huge motorcaravan rally which took place in Kalgoorlie, as volunteers we were busy for quite a lot of it and we have had a couple of days with friends Ralph and Hanny to wind down. It's now 10o'clock and they have hitched their electric car up to the tow hitch,having demonstrated it at the rally. Tonight we are planning to stop just east of Norseman for the night where we may not have 'phone coverage. Despite being busy we did manage to take a joy-flight at Kalgoorlie and took photos.

CMCA Rally Kalgoorlie

Today is Friday and We are finally getting around to adding a post. After leaving home at the coast we called in to visit friends in Northam, Tom and Lois, we stayed the night and headed off on the Great Eastern Highway. Tom first came to our notice many years ago after driving his Austin Seven to Aus overland from UK, "Egbert" still lives with them. Along the road are many places where people can pull over for a rest and we availed ourselves of one at Karalee Rocks after visiting Southern Cross.Photo is of the Dogs of the dogalog, a type of catalogue for a hardware chain. Realizing that we hadn't spent much money the campground at Coolgardie beckoned, we love the little town which was once a metropolis with stock exchanges. The main road runs through the middle of the town and is immensely wide to enable camel trains to turn! We then came on to Kalgoorlie and the rally, where we have been working flat strap as volunteers, thousands of people from all over have been arriving and most are really nice.We've met up with Hanny and Ralph from Perth and after the rally we will be spending time with them before heading east across the Nullabor.