Whyalla

Thursday 27^th October

On the way north out of Port Lincoln we called in at the Axel Stenross Maritime Museum. This is a museum dedicated to the life work of two Finnish Boat builders who settled at Port Lincoln in 1927 and spent their lives building wooden boats of all shapes and sizes. 

Part of the museum encompasses their workshop with all their original tools, many of them made by them, on display. 

Several of the boats they had made were also on display, donated back to the museum by their owners.

From Port Lincoln we followed the coast line through more wheat fields, and then through open farm land to Whyalla where we arrived at about 3.30pm.  It was quite interesting watching the outside temperature gauge on the car as we travelled north.  It was 16 degrees when we left Port Lincoln, and by the time we got to Cowell, about half way to Whyalla, it had risen to 19 degrees.   

We stopped for lunch on the side of the road just north of Cowell, and when we started off again the temperature was 21 degrees.  It was about 100 km to Whyalla and in about the first 30km, the temperature climbed to 33 degrees.  The thermometer was clicking over about as fast as the speedometer, and the temperature had more than doubled since we left Port Lincoln.  It then slowly started to fall back until when we got to Whyalla it was reading 27 degrees.

Whyalla is a port town almost at the head of the Spencer Gulf and has a population of about 23,000.  Its main industry is a huge Steel Works where Iron Ore from nearby mines is smelted down to several different kinds of steel.

There is a maritime museum with a WW2 Royal Australian Navy Corvette, the Whyalla, on display which you can take a guided tour through, and we hope to do that while we are here.

We have managed to chew through the two rear tyres on the back of the Pajero, so we have booked that in for two new ones to be fitted tomorrow.  We are a bit disappointed with the mileage we got from them, just under 20,000km.  We had them fitted in Alice Springs, and had hoped they would get us right round Aussie.  Must be wear and tear from the caravan, as the front tyres are only about 20% worn.

Friday 28^th October

The car was booked in for 11.30 to have the two new tyres fitted, so the school day was a bit longer than usual. When we dropped off the car they said they would need it for about an hour.  Going by our past experiences we decided to give them about an hour and a half.

After dropping the car off, we had a walk around town, what there was of it.  After about half an hour we had more than seen it all and as we walked back past the tyre place, there was our car parked out front all ready to go.  We couldn’t believe it.

We drove up to a lookout overlooking the port and the steelworks. 

As usual for this part of Australia, the wind was blowing at about 100 mph, but at least it was quite a bit warmer.  We had no sooner got there than it started to rain. After grabbing a few quick photos we went back to the van for a late lunch.

The weather cleared up a bit after lunch so we headed off to see the Maritime Museum and hopefully get a tour of the Warship Whyalla which forms part of the museum.  We were in luck and had a very interesting look over the ship. The Whyalla was actually built here in Whyalla, hence the name, and saw service in the Pacific during the war fulfilling many roles including that of minesweeping.

At the end of her service she was to be scrapped, and the local community and council got together and bought her for $5000,  but then it cost them $570,000 to get her hauled out of the water and the 2 kilometres over land to where she now rests at the museum.

After our tour of the ship, and a look through the rest of the museum, it was time for some grocery shopping and back to the van for beer o’clock.

Saturday 29^th October

After a late breakfast we headed into town to look for some new jandals for Christel.  Although there was a nice blue sky, the wind was still blowing at 100 mph, so we decided to go to the Indoor Aquatic Centre to let Cameron blow off some steam. Then it was back to the caravan where Christel cooked up one of her famous dampers for lunch.  This time she tried a slight variation to the recipe, adding a can of beer instead of the usual water and cooking oil.  Yummy, but we all preferred her other tried and true recipes better.

After lunch we took a drive out to nearby Point Lowly which is about 30 km further up the Spencer Gulf from Whyalla. There was nothing there except a light house, and of course, a lot of wind. 

From there we drove back to camp.  A fairly nothing sort of day.  Tomorrow we will continue on up to Port Augusta at the head of the Spencer Gulf for a couple of days.