Crossing the Murray

Last night was nice and warm again and we drove out of the caravan park at 8:40 heading for Morgan. Mr Google[maps] and our roadmap indicated the shortest road to our destination but just after Cadell we found a ferry instead of a bridge. I immediately remembered another carvaner showing me a large bolt from his coupling that had sheared off when driving on or off a ferry. Looking at the steep approach onto the flat ferry I can well imagine how that can happen. I turned around, went back to Cadell and took the other road to Morgan which didn't cross the river. I discovered that the SA government doesn't believe in bridges - as we came into Morgan there was ANOTHER FERRY across the Murray. We had no choice but to slowly go down the steep ramp and with much creaking and groaning drive onto the ferry. That went reasonably well but getting off on the

other side was a challenge with the back of the caravan scraping on the ferry a loud CRACK sounded very much like the sheared bolt that I had seen. We immediately pulled over and checked everything but couldn't see any visible damage. The only component that broke was a plastic plate at the end of the back support.

Refuelling in Morgan also reminded me of our "outback fuel" issues - Expensive and gives less milage per litre. At Morgan we paid 20 cents / litre more than everywhere else.

The landscape on the drive to Burra was very much dessert-like with only knee high shrubs and sheep scattered thought. Lots of wind turbines indicated that we are in a high wind area and we certainly felt some of that.

A quick stop in Burra allowed us to restock with fruit and veg, but not too much as we can't take any into WA which is (hopefully) only a couple of days away.

Onto Crystal Brook and into Port Augusta for another refuelling stop combined with lunch. We also filled our 2 x 20lt jerry cans so we won't get caught short crossing the Nullarbor. After Port Augusta the road is long and straight but with a 110km/h speed limit and very little traffic, driving is a breeze and km's just zoom by. We again timed our destination to the sunset time and lobbed into Wudinna with about 10 or 15 minutes to spare.

The kids were really impressed when a helicopter crew, staying at the same location, came back from their day's work and landed the helicopter right in the backyard. We'll do it all again tomorrow and hope to camp somewhere close to the WA border.

We are not sure when we'll be able to update the blog next as we may be out of phone range for a little while but you can always get a live view of our location via this link to our GPS tracker.

To see a map of todays travel you can click this link.