Month: October 2024

Out motel, left onto road. Continue for 144 km straight, turn left into motel. Hopefully a different one.

We’re on the B1, Princes Highway. Designed in 1920 for a visit of UK royalty. It’s hugs the coast, straight and you can see far ahead. So the endurance challenge is what to focus on. Kangaroo road kill, the large lorries that occasionally thunder by. Only one cafe, next to a bit of broken replica oil drilling rig (from 1860s).

Destination is Kingston and it’s 1700 inhabitants.

Interesting day where time merged with tarmac and the trance of the turning pedals.

Yesterday the sign at a bus stops read “don’t forget to hail the bus”. How things have changed: from throngs being encouraged to Hail Caesar, now we honour buses. The connection is roads: today a long straight road for 30 miles or so: maybe the Romans were here too.

The landscape is generally flat and dry. Lots of milk farms. Adelaide City seems distant.

The locals have different ways to express their humour, giving us something new to focus on other than the headwind.

Basically following the Murray River which we take a cable ferry to cross at Wellington.

It starts 2500km inland: only 4% of its water reaches the river mouth near Meningie. Abstraction for farming and drinking water.

Meningie was one an important cross roads and stopping point for paddle steamers. Founded in 1866, it’s 600 population is smaller than the heyday. Abstraction from the 1830s onwards meant the river could not keep the sea out so it changed and silted up.

Tomorrow’s route is straightforward. Left out of motel. Stay on the same road for 149km. Mind the snakes….