Port Augusta in South Australia

For this fourth week on the road, we headed from Adelaide to Port Augusta. This small town located in the state of South Australia hosts about 14000 people and is considered as the gate to the Australian Outback.

To get there, we took the Ghan (name of our Train). This train is quite special as it counts 37 wagons making him something like 890m long. Just impressive

Did you say Port Augusta?

When leaving Adelaide, we asked ourselves "What are we going to do there ... and Why do we have even planned a stop there?" ... we are still not quite sure.

Anyway, now it's too late to change. We have to spend five days, four nights here and our Train to Perth is only leaving on Thursday (since there is only one train per week...).

We arrive here in the evening. First thing we do is find a camping spot for the night and some food. The next day, we head over to the nearby Tourism Office (yeah ... everything is kinda "nearby" there), and got ourselves equipped with some maps.

The Town of Port Augusta is quite nice. It is so to say planted in the middle of the outback, right at the end of the Spence Golf.  Also, from here we have a great view at the Flinder ranges, a mountain chain of 430km long and 1.170m high that almost surrounds the place.

BTW, big thanks to the tourism office that accepted to keep our bags for these four days. We spend about $70 for the lockers in Melbourne ... Grrrrr.

Going around the town

During these five days in town, we got enough time to visit "everything" We even got some spare time to relax by the waterfront.

The city by itself is quite nice. It has BBQs in every corners, some parks and a few supermarkets. Also free drinking water fountains - useful when you are in the desert!

Meeting the Dolphins

Port Augusta is not just that nice little town pictured above. It is also the Spencer Gulf which goes right into the Great Australian Bight. So here, dolphins and wales are swimming up the gulf and can be spotted if you are patient enough.

We only saw dolphins (twice) but no wales. The season for wales is a little bit later in June-July.

Next stop, Perth!

Tonight, we will be hoping back on the train and head to Perth. Arrival time is scheduled at 9:30am on May 11th .... 2 nights, 1 day later. Yeay ... 30 hours on the train!

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