Day 5 – 28/03/2011

Today was a day when our plans just kept changing.  We packed up this morning and on the advise of the man who cleaned the toilets in the rest stop that we were staying in. We planned a long drive day to Port Pirie, we primed the kids for a day in the car and set off.  It is with great disappointment that I confess we had been staying in a fabulous wine region with multiple cellar doors crossing our path and we did not stop at any……must be the influence of the children.  Anyway off we headed to Morgan where we planned to stop for a quick morning tea break.  Morgan is a lovely old river town, so we headed down to the Murray to watch the car ferry crossing and the check out the flood depth gauge, my the mighty Murray can rise when the water flows.

Anyway we got to talking to some very friendly grey nomads who told us that a fabulous spot to stop was only 90kms away, a place called Burra Creek Gorge, they said it’s free and beautiful, so we thought why not check it out.  To date all recommendations from grey nomads about accommodation had been spot on.  They also said that the bakery up the road sold the best pies and had good coffee…we took their word on this as well but they were very wrong!!  We left Morgan hoping that they had better taste in camp spots than they did pies and coffee.

A quick stop at the Morgan Information Centre also lead to a second change in plans – now we are not going to Port Pirie at all, the lovely lady in the information centre advised us to go the Port Augusta via Burra and Petersborough. So many places to visit and so little time….

As we headed out of Morgan the voice from the far back seat “oh no not another straight road with no cars”….”yes” we said “we will be travelling on hundreds of straight roads without lots of other cars from now on” the voice replied “great” but I’m not sure he meant great with glee!!

We didnt get far before we noticed this very unusual tree!!  There was even a toilet but only Pete chose to use it!!

We pulled into the Burra Creek Gorge Reserve at lunchtime and it was beautiful, not a gorge like you would expect rather a river/creek.  The trees though were fabulous, big old river gums the circumference’s of some were huge, we constantly kept telling the kids look at the trees you won’t see trees like this at home!!  I think they think we have lost the plot.

As soon as we would let them the boys were off on their bikes to check out the river and look for a good place to drop in their yabbie pot. After returning and declaring they were exhausted I seized the moment to get them to do some school work, this lasted for about 30mins before they declared school over and we headed off for a bush walk. 

The day’s highlight though for the kids occurred last as they put on their wetsuits and jumped in the creek, squeals of ‘its cold’ could be heard by all the other campers but this didn’t stop them from swimming around and then plucking up their courage to jump of the rope swing.  

As the sun went down the yabbies were winning, any ones of edible size had managed to avoid the pot and little ones had been set free to grow.