Norfolk Nomads: Wudinna.

Monday 24^th October

Ceduna is at the top North West corner of the Eyre Peninsula. From Ceduna one road follows the western coast of the peninsula down to Port Lincoln at the southern tip of the peninsula, and another road heads in an easterly direction across the top of the peninsula to Port Augusta at the north eastern end of the peninsula.

After 17days of school holidays, Christel and Cameron were back into their school room stuff this morning. This means we are back into the routine of doing school work until about half past nine, then packing up to be out of whichever caravan park we are in, by the required 10.00 o’clock.

We decided to follow the coast road south for about 100 km to Streaky Bay, and after a look around there, cut back across to the Port Augusta Road and follow it to Wudinna where we would stay the night. It was a heavy overcast day, and the road to Streaky Bay was long flat straights and boring.

Because of the cold scungy weather, we didn’t call in to Streaky Bay as first intended, and instead continued on to Wudinna. More of the same roads, long flat straights with scrubby bush on either side, and beyond that, guess what, more bloody wheat fields.

I’m beginning to hate weetbix. About every 30 km or so along the road we would come across huge wheat silos where the wheat from the surrounding farms is stored before being trucked out for further processing.

Wudinna is about the size of Midhurst with its centre piece being huge wheat silos. There are also a couple of tractor sale yards with their huge tractors and other harvesting equipment on display. The spray booms on this sprayer open out to cover a 30 metre wide strip. These headers for a combine harvester are each 11 meters wide. Big machinery by anyone’s standards.

In the centre of town is a huge granite statue erected to represent the fact that the area was originally settled by sheep farmers.

After a late lunch we went for a drive in the country side to have a look at some rather peculiar granite rock formations, one of which is Mt Wudinna, which next to Uluru, is Australia’s second largest rock monolith. And none of us had ever heard of it before. Mind you it’s nothing very spectacular, as, unlike Uluru, 99% of it is still below ground.