Finally started our return journey today. It was a bit of a late start – took us a while to finish getting everything ready and pack the car. It hadn’t made it any easier that Andres was very restless and woke up in the middle of the night and refused to go back to sleep. I ended up sleeping next to him on the spare bed next to his cot to keep him company.
By the time I started packing the car, it was already very unpleasant outside, very hot but also a strong hot wind was blowing making it feel even worse. We had planned to be on the road by 9am, but it was approaching 11am before we actually got going.
We drove from Mt Barker down the freeway, past Murray Bridge and stopped at Tailem Bend briefly to feed Andres a little. We then continued out to Lameroo where we stopped for a toilet break and to feed Andres some more of his lunch. By this time it was already over 42 degrees with the dusty wind blowing, it was quite unpleasant. We did find some lush green grass to sit on in the shade along the main street of Lameroo – we were wondering where they were getting all this water from to keep things looking so green … even the round-about looked amazingly green!
We continued on to Pinaroo, where we stopped for some lunch in a cafe there. It was extremely unpleasant outside – the car was fine when we were moving with the air conditioner on full, it was stopping and getting out that was horrid! The worst bit was the tar on the road was melting and stuck to the bottom of my shoes – so it was sticky wherever I walked after that, and my shoes were even sticking to the pedals in the car a little bit which was very annoying.
After lunch we continued on through Ouyen and eventually on to Swan Hill. Most of this second-half of the journey was very unpleasant with the temperature gauge recording a scorching 46 degrees outside for most of the trip and the wind gusting strongly and blowing up dust and buffeting the car. Fortunately there was not much road traffic, so the drive itself was easy.
We got in to Swan Hill around 6pm unpacked the car, fed Andres and then I headed out to find some food. Fortunately the air-conditioning in our apartment at the caravan park worked quite well – it was still nearly 40 degrees around 7pm. The caravan park pool looked tempting, but it was crowded and we were too tired after a long day of driving. We did stay up and watch a bit of television, but it ended up being an early night.
The area around Lameroo has a huge underground water basin from which the area draws fresh water which accounts for the lush lawns. There are quite a few soaks in the region where water seeps to the surface – there are several on Purdie’s farm SW of the town.
There is a worry that this water supply is dwindling – levels in some wells have dropped several metres over the last decade. The Parilla Potato company draws on this basin to irrigate huge areas. We often see Parilla Potato trucks heading to Adelaide.
http://www.travelmate.com.au/Places/Places.asp?TownName=Lameroo_\_SA