It wouldn't have taken much convincing for us to extend our stay at Port Lincoln, but we have a booking on Saturday's Afghan Express train ride from Port Augusta to Quorn via the Pichi Richi Pass.

Cowell is famous for its jade, but we'd missed that during our last trip and so we planned a stop there to peruse what they had to offer . However before we dropped into the jade shop we decided to have some morning tea at the Cowell Bakery, a place we had good memories of from our last trip. The Kitchener buns - a donut split and filled with jam and fresh cream - looked delicious and were irresistible. Our eyes were almost bigger than our bellies, but we managed to consume them and as it turned out, we still felt so full that we skipped lunch!

Next stop was at Whyalla where we stopped at the Visitors Centre, also the location of the Maritime Museum which includes the former HMAS Whyalla. We arrived just in time to do the 1:00pm tour of the Whyalla, which was very informative. We learned the Whyalla was used for clearing mines along the Australian coast during WWII and finished up with the Victorian Public Works Department, who renamed it the Rip as it was used in the clearing of the entry into Victoria's Port Phillip Bay. When the Whyalla was to be disposed by the Department for scrap, the City of Whyalla made a successful bid to obtain it for only $5000, however the cost to move it the 2km or so from the Whyalla slipway to the museum over land was around $500,000! A video in the Maritime Museum we later saw showed it was a massive effort . The table in the dining room was interesting in that it was not a usual rectangular shape, but was trapezoidal to suit the irregular shape of the room.

The Maritime Museum had a number of interesting displays covering early exploration, the Whyalla shipbuilding history and wartime connections. The Museum is housed in what was the Recreation Hall of the singlemen's quarters for the shipyards. The BHP shipyards operated from 1940-1978 during which time 66 vessels were built, including an oil drilling rig. One very interesting display was the two volume and associated atlas of Matthew Flinders account of his exploration titled A Voyage to Terra Australis. There was also a very large model railway display with scenery based on the area. There was a lot to take in and by the time we'd done the tour and been through the Museum, we'd spent almost 2 hours there.

So it was onto Port Augusta and after quickly setting the van up on site, we drove just a short distance to the Australian Arid Lands Botanical Gardens . This was a great display of the vegetation associated with this arid area and it obviously attracts the wildlife as we saw close up some more lizards which we'd seen on the roadside during our travels. There were a couple of lookout areas which provided great views across to the Flinders Ranges. There was a storyboard at the outlook above the red cliffs detailing Matthew Flinders exploration which extended up the Spencer Gulf to this point and it was interesting to read that after he had explored this area in 1802, he made a comment "Nothing of particular interest having presented itself to detain us at the head of the Gulf, we got underway." And also "No person shall have occasion to come after me to make further discoveries", suggesting there was little to be gained exploring what must have seemed like fruitless ground.

Dinner was seafood pies which we'd bought in Port Lincoln and we heated in the Weber. We wish we'd bought more!