24 August 2013 - Peterborough Caravan Park, Peterborough, South Australia

We were up good and early this morning; my new jade pendant unwrapped and around my neck, birthday wishes remembered, breakfast done, packed up and ready to hit the road.

We are still carrying the golf clubs about, those we were hoping to on-sell to other travellers so I suggested Chris check whether the guys next door to us were heading out across the Nullarbor and potential takers of our wares.

The two middle aged chaps travelling with a camper trailer were just about to leave when Chris engaged them in conversation, asking them where they were headed. “Up to Innaminka and across the Simpson Desert”, they replied. Intrepid chaps, no less!

“Braver than I,” responded my fearless husband.

This gave me food for thought, and I thought of all those people we have spoken to over the last few years who have seen our adventures as “brave” and how I once viewed our plans. Now, encountering so many on the road, I know our own adventures are quite tame by comparison. Crossing the really barren desert does however sit there as "intrepid".

With such meanderings of the mind, we still managed to complete a little shopping and be on the road out of Port Augusta soon after 9 am. We left the Prince Highway twenty four kilometres south of Port Augusta turning onto the alternate route through to Sydney; 1,552 kilometres via Broken Hill. The road heads across the grazed coastal plains, well-populated with apricot coloured sheep, long stained with the red dirt beneath the blue bush and salt bush that provides their staple, and up into the Lower Flinders Ranges in second gear, across the Horrocks Pass at 462 metres ASL, and down into the small town of Wilmington. We passed through Wilmington in late 2011 on our way down from the Flinders National Park, a charming little country town once called “Beautiful Valley”, by the pioneers who settled the valley in the 1850s. But this I have spoken of long ago in this very blog, so shall not repeat myself further.

I was tempted to buy a bag of oranges from people parked up in a small motorhome at Wilmington, oranges from the Riverlands, beside the Murray. We gorged ourselves on Murray River oranges last year and the memories came flooding back. But the bags for $6, although well priced, were large and storage is sometimes a problem; I did not really want to have them carried in the back of the landcruiser. And something else came to mind; the fact that we will soon have to contend with the quarantine restrictions into the Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone. It is all very well to buy oranges from the Zone but you can’t take them back in; how silly is that?

Last time we had come through Wilmington, we had continued on south then turned back toward the Spencer Gulf emerging from a narrow pass at Port Germain. This time we turned east and continued for over forty kilometres across this beautiful valley. We passed pockets of grain and canola crops but most seemed to be reserved for grazing.

Orroroo lies fifty three kilometres east of Wilmington and today, a Saturday, was as quiet as could be. The main street is wide and picturesque with beautifully manicured gardens running down the centre.

Calling in to the giant Red Gum

One kilometre to the west of the township grows their pride and joy; a giant Red Gum, or eucalyptus camaldulensis to be exact, estimated to be over 500 years old and with a girth of 10.89 metres measured 61 centimetres above the ground. It is indeed a butty old tree although I am sure we have seen as big. Still, every big old tree needs some respect, so a photo or two were in order before we pressed on.

Today Orroroo has a population a little over 500, but is a shadow of its former self. Yet for all that, the residential areas which we drove around through looking for a flat spot to park, are as immaculate as the central main street garden.

The place was first settled in 1844 when two brothers took up the Pekina Run which covered 320 square miles. They did not receive a millimetre of rain during the seventeen months that they lived there. Disillusioned by the drought, they sold out for thirty pounds.

In 1864 an eating house was set up to cater for the drovers and the bullockys who travelled through the area. About ten years; later the town was surveyed and the first land sales went through in 1876, with the council offices constructed in 1888.

Sculptures in the centre of Orroroo

Electricity was connected to the town in 1923, thirteen years after an irrigation scheme was formed after damming the Pekina Creek. It, like most of the bridged depressions in the ground was no doubt more often dry than wet, as everything was today despite the green of the vegetation all about.

With water, the land about Orroroo flourished, forty blocks benefitting from the scheme. At its peak the scheme supported up to 1,000 milking cows. Cream from these dairy farms was sent to the internationally acclaimed South Australian farmers Union Butter Factory in Orroroo. Dairy farming declined in the area from the late 1960s, the butter factory closed in 1971 and the irrigation was abandoned in the 1980s. This all had much to do with the rising levels of salinity, a problem repeated here yet again.

We finally did find somewhere relatively flat to park, or at least after I had laid down blocks. It was my action that caused a local chap to stop and offer assistance; he thought we had a problem with our tyres. We explained that we needed to be as level as possible for the gas fridge to operate correctly and thanked him for his concern. He bid us well and limped off back to his vehicle, looking more in need of assistance than us.

In fact everyone was very friendly there but once the main street was walked one way and back the other, there was little to hold us longer, so we resumed our journey, on to Peterborough, forty eight kilometres south east.

And so here we are 10 kilometres from the coldest place in South Australia. Yongala, a tiny town nearby holds the State’s three top records for minimum temperatures with minus 8.2 degrees centigrade in July 1976, minus 8.1 degrees in June 1959 and minus 7.9 degrees in July 1958. Needless to say this is one of the reasons we elected to stay in a caravan park on electricity. The other reason is far more important; tonight the second Bledisloe Cup rugby test between New Zealand and Australia is being played in Wellington and of course we are on about day three of the last Ashes cricket match being played in London. The latter is a lost cause but a true cricket fan will enjoy even the death throes of their team, and Chris is one such.

To quote one of our travel bibles, Peterborough is obsessed with rail, and it is just this that holds the town together these days. Back in its heyday, Peterborough was a major centre, not directly because of the original settlement by German settlers by the name of Koch who named the place Petersburg after a fellow who sold the land to settle the town. During the anti-German hysteria of the First World War, the name was changed. By this time the rail was already the life blood of the town, having arrived in December 1880 and for the following one hundred years employing approximately 10,000 people during that time.

Lines from Broken Hill, Adelaide, Port Pirie and Port Augusta converged on the town, or more accurately on Terowie, twenty kilometres or so south of the town, all with their varying gauges, and it was here that sense was made of this nonsense. Peterborough itself offered workshop services and water, hence the size and demand for this service industry.

But as with most railways in the latter part of the last century, much of this came to a sad end. The broad garage connection to Adelaide via Burra was severed in the late 1980s. The narrow gauged line north to Quorn last carried freight in 1980 and was removed in the mid-1980s. Grain trains ran as far as Orroroo into the mid-1980s, and in its later years it was used by tourist trains until 2002. The roundhouse is still used to display its coaches and locomotives and it is this that represents Peterborough’s industry today. Tourism has taken over and all credit must be given to those doing the promotion, however we are neither train spotters nor rail-nutters. A walk up and down the street, a brief check out of the displays along the way and we were ready to settle into the caravan park in readiness for a big evening.

I do have to make mention however of a delightful story that reminded me of the wonderful movie based on a true story we saw some time ago; Red Dog. This one is about a more local canine: Bob, the railway mascot.

The story of Bob the railway mascot begins when he was rounded up in Adelaide in 1883 with a lot of other stray dogs to be sent north to the rabbit plague. He was adopted by a railway guard, William Ferry, who, when the train stopped at Petersburg, exchanged another dog for the puppy who was taken from the sheep van and immediately began his railway career.

Mr Ferry trained the pup to do all kinds of tricks and later when he was a guard on the narrow gauge Northern Lines, took Bob thousands of miles with him in the guards van. Occasionally Bob rode with the engineman generally riding on the coal in the tender. Mr Ferry later became Assistant Stationmaster at Petersburg, but Bob the Railway Dog continued to ride the trains. He loved the engine whistle and the rattle of the wheels and took possession of his seat on the coat tender of any out or homeward bound train. Bob travelled hundreds of thousands of miles this way. He always had a cheery bark and a wagging tail especially for children who would shout: “There’s Bob! Good Old Bob!”

For many years Bob rode engines all over Australia, as the mood took him making interstate journeys and short suburban trips on trams as well as trains. He also made river trips on the Murray Steamers. He travelled far – to Oodnadatta, Broken Hill, Mt Gambier and more. He was guest of honour at the Melbourne exhibition. Bob was also seen at Hawkesbury River station, 50 miles north of Sydney. His last days were spent on the Silverton Tramway Co., where he died in 1895. He was mourned by the travelling public all over Australia and rather macabrely, his body was preserved and stood for many years in a glass case in the Exchange Hotel here in Peterborough.