#for transparency we got a couple donations the other day that went towards a few groceries & daily necessities & cold meds & cat supplies

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Pinnaroo

Day 11    24 February

True to my word, we moved on to Pinnaroo today with just the occasional short detour to look at some camping sites along the way.  Pinnaroo is a reasonable size, immediately west of the South Australia border and we rolled into the caravan park at a little after 3pm.  We followed the instruction on the entry sign to ring the manager and were told to pick any site we liked, with a recommendation of the three ‘best’ sites, one of which was already taken.  The other two had little shade so we picked another one and set ourselves up in minutes.  I have never seen a park like it – huge drive-through sites, all situated on lush green grass with big trees and all mod cons available.  Wonderful.  An interesting quirk about payment though……!  When the two managers arrived, we were told it was $35 a night – toward the high end of the scale, but the place was great and its location probably justified it.  But when we pulled out a credit card, they said it would cost $40 a night – a $5 card fee of more than 14% - clearly illegal although we didn’t press the issue.  Fortunately, we had enough cash so paid in the old-fashioned way.

I went off bird-seeking for a while, but it was hot and I didn’t see much anyway.  They had a number of rather sad-looking aviaries with maybe twenty-odd parrots of varying species – all donated by the local Rotary group.  I had a quick look but would have preferred to release the poor birds.

Day 12    25 February

We went out driving during the day.  We started with a quick tour of town and then went out to Karte, 20-odd kilometres north.  It was (and is) a government town – whatever that means – and has long been abandoned but there are quite a few signs of what it must have been in its heyday. 

A substantial old limestone building at Peebinga, near Karte, out from Pinnaroo - like most buildings in the area, we think this one was abandoned.

We explored the area a bit from the cool of the car and then set off back into Victoria and the Big Desert.  We were not eager to challenge ourselves on some of the riskier roads so eventually retreated to the Border Track after maybe forty kilometres.  The Border Track follows the border (How did you guess?) but some parts of it are one-way – heading into other parts that are also one-way in the opposite direction so after some kilometres, we relocated to a different track a few kilometres further west.  Twenty or thirty kilometres later we found ourselves on a very challenging stretch of track that was also posted as a no through road so we backtracked a few clicks and took a side road that eventually took us back to the main road and eventually back to Pinnaroo.  We drove about 360 kilometres that day. 

The road ahead - in the Murray Sunset National Park - we drove (and love) a lot of roads like this.

It was a day of wonderful skies.  Time and time again, the sky was quite transparent with just thin wispy streamers of cloud streaking the azure blue.  I loved it – and the swirls and punctuation that seemed to accompany the feathery clouds.

A day of enchanting wispy clouds.

We refuelled in town and I saw a sign for a wetland, so after we had a drink in the van, I set off to walk there – quite a bit further than I expected, but probably worth it to see a couple of small lakes and quite a few birds.  I just got back in time for another delicious dinner and a couple more episodes of Homeland.  We sit up in bed and watch a couple of episodes most nights.