Quorn to Adelaide - July 9th - Day 14

Our last day of holidays in the outback L

Just a sign for personal reference....

W'anchor' - don't drive like a wanker!

Oh yesss another 6am wake-up call – might as well considering it’s our last day and all… First stop Dutchman Stern’s Conservation Park – where we were doing our last big walk of the trip! It was a 4km walk on a relatively steep incline. It was unfortunate that it was soooo foggy, by the time we got to the top the fog hadn’t lifted so we couldn’t see much – but it was a nice walk for the morning (well besides the rain). By the time we were half way down the fog started to lift so we got a bit of a nice view..

After our walk Shane dropped us off in Quorn to look around and he headed back to make lunch. The steam train in Quorn was just about to leave so we stuck around to watch it – which was pretty cool. I felt like I was in the past in some old black and white movie… it was really neat!

After the train departed we got some coffee and walked back to our accommodation for lunch. Shane made us a special treat for lunch we had bacon and eggs and it was delicious!!! We cleaned up after lunch and hit the road to Adelaide.  We made some small stops along the way – at gas stations and stuff but nothing too exciting.

We finally hit Adelaide and it was time to say goodbye to our new friends – we give Lucy, Steve and the kids big hugs and wish them well and then they were on their way. Our hostel was the next stop – we said goodbye to the Americans and got off the bus. Big hugs for Shane – great guide, sad to part ways!! We then went on our way… We went to the restaurant Shane recommended with the Adventure Tours deals which was a cute little Italian restaurant (so good!) and they gave us free mud cake because they weren’t open for the next two days and they wanted to give it away – I wasn’t going to complain! At 8:55pm we were back in our hostel and in bed! Tomorrow we definitely didn’t have to get up at 5, 6 or 7!

Quorn - Day 13 - July 8th

6:00 am wake-up call this morning! First stop of the morning was at this old sheep homestead – where we saw sheep! Imagine that!

Random picture Kind of thrown in there - it was the same day as the sheeps but I only liked this picture so I put it in.. one more stop was at an Aboriginal Cave Painting site.... This was at that site...

I sat up in the front for a bit – gorgeous views from the front of the bus! There was fog over the hills in the distance, gorgeous colours with the sunrise and fog – definitely happy I chose to sit up front for a bit!

Next stop was the big stop of the day….. Wilpena Pound – where we had the choice of two walks a 7.8km relatively flat walk or a 3km + UP – Lindsey and I decided to stick with the flat walk – the easier of the two. About half way there, there was an old house with a story about Jessie – it was about how her and her family lived in this house and worked their tails off trying to farm in the 1800’s and how the land was so harsh and it was so difficult to live – pretty neat story. Jessie’s family’s house was still there and standing and you could look into the windows. When we got to the top we still had amazing views and had great photo opportunities overlooking the land. We headed back down and started getting lunch ready for the rest of the crew.

We then jumped back on the bus for a well-deserved nap and headed back to Quorn to the wallaby lookout. Of course once we got there I forgot my classes on the bus and had to run back to the bus to get them – by the time I got back everyone was leaving and the wallabies were gone – and I ran (more like sprinted) 1km for nothing. So I sat in the front to see if I could see any – so we said to our tour guide, we said, “Shane, can you please let us see some wallabies and kangaroos so Alyssa can see them”, Shane goes sure thing “Woosh” and there they were… Literally – no joke – all of a sudden kangaroo appeared – and not just any kangaroo – an albino kangaroo!!!! Needless to say Shane was pretty happy with himself – especially because he had never ever seen an albino kangaroo either!

We then headed back to the accommodation for some dinner – and we watched ‘Pricilla Queen of the Desert’ which we were told is a must when we were here. Let me explain this scenario – all 6 kids were down there with us, Lucy and Steve and team Canada watching this movie. This movie is about drag queens that drive from Sydney to Alice Springs (and they stopped at a lot of places we had just visited!) with a lot of inappropriate language and innuendos. The most awkward scene was the scene with the ping pong show – now I’m not going to explain it in detail – but basically it involves a girl and a ping pong ball and an audience the ping pong ball somehow ends up in the audience… and she didn’t use her hands to get it there…. Anyway not necessarily appropriate for the age group…. Needless to say it was cool to see the places we had just visited in a movie! 

Coober Pedy To Quorn - Day 12 - July 7th

Oopsie - I guess I forgot to finish my trip.... well here's the rest of it!

Back to early starts this morning – but we started at 6:15 so not so bad! Our first stop was a photo opportunity just down the road – we watched the sunrise at this little place that had a big old truck up in the air that said ‘Coober Pedy’ and a mural was there as well.. And of course as we were pulling out of the parking lot at 7am we honked the horn loud and proud to wake up the rest of the campers!!

The next stop along the way was the road sign that read ‘Adelaide (insert arrow) Darwin' (Can I just say that team Canada was the only one who was doing the whole thing!) Naturally we had to take some silly pictures!

And then….. today consisted of silly little stops along the way to kind of take up time and just get to where we were going – the stops weren’t tooooo exciting, still worth writing about though. Another runway – this one was in the middle of the road – and it is used for ‘The Flying Doctors’ which is a company that flies to different parts of the outback for fast medical service. Pretty cool group of people… Obviously we had to have a paper airplane competition on the air strip. Steve won – I personally think he had an unfair advantage – he did a class assignment with his science class to see who could create an airplane that went the furthest – they had to research and everything – again unfair advantage!

I know a little random but I love this picture 

 After driving for a bit all of a sudden we noticed a huge landscape change (one of about 3 or 4 on the trip thus far). It was the beginning of the salt lake ravine – basically there are heaps of salt lakes in the area – the most popular being Lake Ayre (we didn’t stop at that one though). We stopped and took some cool reflection pictures – it looked and sounded like you were walking on ice – but really it was just salt!

As we were getting ready for lunch at the salt lake feral Emu’s running around!

Next stop was Woomera – where we saw some missiles and army planes.

Finally after silly little stops along the way we made it to our accommodation is Quorn – where we had our own bedroom with bunks, lights… or it gets better… our own bathroom, sheets, a real pillow AND a doona (aka a comforter). Wow!

Had some supper which was more roo, sausage, buffalo risole, salad – it was a feast! I would just like to point out that Team Canada have officially travelled the entire length of the Stuart Highway! Only a little ways to go to get to Adelaide now!