Friday 28 September – Where do I start for today?  I suppose waking up time is a good place.  It was a bit earlier than I had hoped when I woke at about 6.30 to find Grant up and dressed and the sound of raindrops on our roof. As we didn’t have to be at the ferry wharf until a bit before 10am we imagined having a slow, easy morning.  So this was not a good start, as we certainly don’t like packing the van up when the canvas is wet.  However the rain was just those few drops for a couple of minutes, but the sky was very threatening and looked as if it was going to bucket down any time soon.  So we decided that we would gobble our breakfast, pack up the van and just be early birds at the ferry stop.

 So that’s what we did, and after driving the fifteen kilometres to Lucky Bay we found ourselves first in the queue at the ridiculously early time of twenty to nine!  The office where you had to check in didn’t open till 9.30, by which time there were about seven or eight vehicles, so while we were waiting I read a couple of magazines to fill in the time.  The ferry arrived a bit late as the weather was poor and they’d had a bit of a rough crossing, and though we were first there, we were third last to be directed onto the ferry.   They let all the cars and four wheel drives on first, about twenty of them, and then us, followed by two mobile homes that had arrived after we did.  It was a very big, impressive ferry – a bit of a catamaran.

The SEASA ferry.

It was pretty cool with the wind today, and I thought they might have had the heating on in the boat, but no …. they had the air-conditioning on!!  Our crossing of Spencer Gulf took a bit over two hours, and we arrived in Wallaroo just before one o’clock.  We bought a bit of lunch half an hour before landing as that saved us stopping for something along the way.

Now came my test.  With Zola incapacitated, it was left to me to navigate the drive to today’s destination – Tailem Bend.  And after my poor performance back in April trying to negotiate (country town sized) Adelaide at four thirty on a Friday afternoon, I wasn’t going to repeat the exercise, so we were avoiding Adelaide.  Last night I sat and transcribed the 28 steps in the route Google Maps had found for us to follow (as I don’t have a printer with me), so with my notes in my lap off we went – Grant driving and me doing my best Zola impersonation. 

We wound our way in a south easterly direction from Wallaroo (where the ferry dropped us off), passing through such places as Kadina, Port Wakefield, Two Wells, Gawler, Williamstown, Mt Pleasant, The Barossa Valley, The Tamar Valley, Tungkillo, Palmer, Murray Bridge and finally reached Tailem Bend at around 5 o’clock this afternoon.  The heavy skies lifted for most of the afternoon, but as we reached Tailem Bend there was a massive black cloud loitering with intent.

The lovely countryside near Gawler.

So we hurriedly set up, and whilst Grant was connecting the power it started to rain, so I leapt out of the van to put our table, chairs, accessory bag, etc out of the rain.  I deposited one lot to the sheltered spot, and as I returned for the next lot I tripped on the short power lead which was lying on the ground and went for a sixer!  I didn’t do any real damage, just a couple of sore spots, but it shook me up a bit.  Grant gave my upper back a rub with some smelly liniment stuff and that seemed to help a bit.  We’ll see how fit I am in the morning – I might have to call in sick for my packing up of the van tasks.  Only joking – I’ll be fine.  But what a twit – I should know by now how big my feet are, and not to put them where they don’t fit!

Well, by now even we are counting the sleeps till we get home – only two more sleeps!!  It’s really hard to believe all that we have seen and done over the past weeks!