Rain was setting in for our departure from Streaky Bay.
Today was to be another long day at the wheel, but we didn’t appreciate the magnitude of that. A massive cold front – also known as a Sideways Weather System (my words, patent applied for) was pursuing us along the Bight.
From Streaky Bay Road, we rejoined the Eyre Highway at Poochera, home to an exceedingly rare ant Nothomyrmecia Macrops, some 70 million years old. It’s of immense interest to entomologists around the world, but the town itself hardly thrives on the grain industry for which it serves. Its population is just 59.
We looked for this bloody ant – I was on my knees scouring the ground for it. It was quite the wrong thing to do, as it likes a woody environment. Still, we dismissed it as yet more tourism skullduggery and gunned it down the highway.
Kimba was our next major stop. From my childhood travels, I recalled we were to execute a ‘turn’ here. And so you do. Go right, then left, but only after you’ve spent quality time with the beautiful silo artwork, the pink galah and perhaps the bakery nearby. Signs cheekily proclaim Kimba to be half way across Australia. The eye doesn’t deceive, I say. We are obviously and distinctly three fifths of the way across. You gotta hold on to something out here.
And Snowtown does! It’s not of their choosing, however. It is home to the infamous ‘Bodies in the barrels‘ murders. in 1999, police were investigating the disappearance of one woman, and their enquiries led them to Snowtown. In the disused bank’s vault, they discovered 8 bodies in plastic barrels, and the culprits were put away in 2003.
Locals just want to change the name of the place and be done with it, such is the stigma. It reminds me a little of the locals at Woodend, Victoria, home to Hanging Rock. They are sick and tired and fed up to the back teeth with out-of-towners swanning in on any given weekend, getting half way up the rock and screaming, “Miranda, don’t go in there! Miranda… MIRANDA!!! AAAAAAARRRRRGH!!!”
Grazia was sufficiently spooked to stay in the car. She kept the motor running and wanted me to get the hell on with it. The photos were rushed. I was being rained on. The WA Sideways Weather System was about to catch up with us in a big way.
Suffice to say, driving conditions were extremely difficult for both of us as we headed to our next night stop in Adelaide’s hills, Hahndorf. Our motel unit at the Old Mill was well appointed, cheap and ultra comfortable.
