Landscapes

The South Australian landscape has been a lot flatter and drier than I expected. NSW and Victoria have forested coastlines with tall eucalyptus trees where as the trees along the SA coast are stunted and sparse, more adapted to the arid and windswept coastlines. The areas we drove through today were no exception. Long stretches of road with only a few trees but a lot of the land was farmed and some mined. Tonight we are in a beautiful National Park but thankfully the stunted gums are about 3m tall, sheltering us from the South Westerly.

Whyalla, this is a town of raw industry. Trucks, men in high-viz, cars with fluro yellow stickers and little red flags, orange trains with a kilometre of little yellow ochre cars. The OneSteel steel works, the oil refinery, the old BHP ship yard, and its all brown, Whalla Rust Brown as I've called it. The rocks and soil on which it is built and the dust in the air, are so rich in iron that if something hasn't already been turned brown then they've painted it brown.

Evan and S went on the OneSteel tour. They saw the steel making process from beginning to end. The blast furness with molten iron, the coke ovens, the oxygen makers. It's at this plant that all the railway tracks in Australia are made. I think S enjoyed it but it was a bit technical.

We spent the remainder of the day driving down the east coast of the Eyre Peninsula. We picked up some fresh mussels and prawns in Port Lincoln, the seafood capital of Australia, then made our way into the spectacular Lincoln NP for the night.

(Point Lowly to Whyalla to Port Lincoln)