Port Augusta Part 2

We visited the Arid Region Botanic Gardens twice. The first time we all went for a walk around various trails. It is an interesting garden, with a lot of information and plants that I am not familiar with. They have some demonstration gardens of different types of arid region, waterwise courtyard or back gardens people could plant out. I liked this idea as it had planting schemes and information on water use (appealed to the sustainability geek in me) and helped me to see what sort of gardens you could still reasonably enjoy in this area. It receives around a quarter of the rainfall we get at home each year.

 This plant requires an Emu to eat the seeds for it to germinate 

 Stunning flowers of the Eucaplyptus Youngiana

Sturt's Desert Pea

The second time, Tilda and I stayed there to do school work while Greg and Rory went to run some errands. It was a very beautiful and relaxing environment to do school and a nice change from the table in the caravan. When Greg and Rory came back we enjoyed a yummy lunch at the cafe there. I definitely can recommend the cafe if you are in Port Augusta.

We drove out to Quorn on the Wednesday. The drive is quite nice through winding hills and crossing over the railway tracks a number of times. It is a cute little town, with some very nice heritage buildings and is home of the Pichi Richi Railway. We would have liked to do the Pichi Richi Railway but it only runs on weekends, and not necessarily both days, and was going to cost almost $200 for us (and that is with Rory free!). Rory was very sad that there were no trains running but we did get to walk on the tracks and look at the carriages that were there, so that made him happy. We decided to have lunch there as we couldn't make anything as all our food was in the caravan and our caravan was still at the mechanics . We went into the only open cafe. There was some filming going on in there with a guy, who looked like the editor of one of the caravan magazines and a lady who we guess ran the cafe. We didn't stay as we didn't feel like the food options there. The only other food place open was the IGA. We wandered in there to see if there was anything we felt like. There was only one row of lights on in the IGA and a sign apologising for the inconvenience as there was a power outage. It turns out the whole (or most) of the town had no, or little, power, which explained why the cafe was dark and food options limited. With not much to go on we had a lunch of ice creams, salt & vinegar chips and apples. Of course, the kids got to play in the playground there. It is the first one we've come across with a quad bike rocker.

 The quirkily named Quornucopia is a beautiful old building

We had hours to kill on Thursday while waiting for the caravan to be repaired, as we had checked out of the cabin so had nowhere to go. That was the morning we did school at the Gardens. In the afternoon we climbed the old water tower, which is touted as one of the attractions of the town. There is a good 360 view from up there, but someone had urinated in it and it stank, which is kind of just symbolic of the town unfortunately.