Day 15 – Blah

Well, despite its best efforts the southerly last night didn’t blow the van over but it did blow one of my thongs away! Found it under the car . This morning however, it did hamstring my
efforts to produce reasonable fuel economy as we drove into the teeth of the damn wind all the way to Port Augusta.

The landscape was singularly uninspiring most of the way. Not even listening to a couple of
interesting podcasts could insulate us from the incessant boredom unfolding outside! A couple of major dry lakes added some interest and the odd lump here and there but the only constant was the dratted wind!

We are still trying to work out the thinking of S.A’s road authorities who not only put the distances to the next town on the wrong side of the road – way over on the right hand side in your direction of travel, but also a) put unintelligible abbreviations on them and b) odd distances. For example we were headed to Port Augusta, along the way was a small hamlet called Pimba. The advisory sign didn’t say “P” for Pimba or “PA” for Port Augusta, or even,
as we’ve seen before, “SH” (which didn’t relate to a place but to a highway junction, the Stuart Highway) it said “PI”. So here we are looking at the road atlas for a place with a two word
name starting with P and I.

The second conundrum reared its ugly head the other day when we were heading towards a place and the signs said 78, 68, 58 etc, today it was 73, 63, 53. Sometimes there’s a sign
here and there, sometimes every ten km, sometimes every five. What the? 
Multiples of five or ten I could understand but this cockeyed “pick a second digit and stick with it” or “stick a distance marker where we have smoko” system makes me wonder if someone has shares in the sign making company! This morning we saw “PB” I assume for “Peterborough”, then further down the road just “P”, gotta love that consistency. Topping it off was a sign saying “P 1” when we had just passed the “Welcome to Peterborough” sign!

I was expecting “PTA” for Port Augusta, either that or the local Parents and Teachers Association but just to confuse us they did the logical thing and had “PA” on the signs.

Another classic sign: “hire fire risk area” on a treeless plain! Flood signs in the N.T. you know
the ones that show the depth of water…”indicates deepest point”! What would you make of a sign showing a cow head butting a car? Of course we have some in NSW – ever wondered about t “falling rocks” sign? What are we supposed to do about it? Bend over and kiss our ass goodbye? Say “thank you for letting me know there’s a snowball’s chance of my imminent demise”?

One “series” of signs they have in south Oz shows a picture of a fairly grizzled bloke, picture a miner or a cocky, saying things like “slow down snookums” or “buckle up honey buns” or “don’t drive drunk sugar plum”. The humour, irony or whatever is lost on me!

Anyway, so boring was the drive that having a gripe about the roadsigns made it more interesting!

Lunch at Maccas, with GG having a “double quarter pounder” (not a pretty sight) followed, then we were back heading towards Peterborough and later Broken Hill with GG driving and of course a tailwind! Murphy I hate you! Oh yeah, guess what, the distance signs on this road are ending in “1” and “6” sheesh! 

The farming land east of the Flinders ranges is by far the best land we’ve seen in S.A. so far but that’s hardly a huge accolade! There’s some mixed farming with canola apparently popular and some wooly throated ground lice grazing away merrily. Again, it’s as flat as the proverbial tack.
 
In sunshine now but still 12 degrees outside, very much appreciating the climate control!

Green everywhere now, quite a contrast to the last two weeks of brown and red!

Well, we arrived at Yunta, score! There’s a BP so I scored some velocity points, there’s flushing loos, a phone signal and we have chocolate! Yee har!