Both my Dad’s family and Marty’s family come from South Australia so we were looking forward to catching up with as many family and friends as possible. Before we left Port Lincoln we were able to catch up with my cousin Greg and his wife Ruth from Whyalla who visited us in the caravan park.
After leaving Port Lincoln we went to the steel mining city of Whyalla. The weather was awful, Whyalla has an average yearly rain fall of 271 mm and 20 mm fell in just one night that we were there, and the beach at Whyalla doesn’t exactly compete with those we have been lucky enough to see on our way round. Nevertheless we still managed to do the OneSteel Whyalla Steelworks tour to hear the story behind more than 100 years of significant Australian iron ore and steelmaking history, and visited the Whyalla Maritime Museum display of WWII naval history and the BHP shipbuilding industry. The prime exhibit is the former HMAS Whyalla, the first modern warship built in South Australia in 1941, which stands on dry land 2 kms from the sea. Both visits were very informative and helped us understand what makes Whyalla tick.
Whilst in Whyalla we also visited my cousin Jo-Anne and her husband Tony. On the way out of Whyalla we stopped for lunch at Port Augusta where we met another cousin Stephen and his wife Lesley. They are also “grey nomads” and had taken the time to come down from Roxby Downs for the day just to meet us of lunch.
I guess my “ancestral home” is Snowtown where my Dad was brought up and my brother Eddie was born. So we made our next stop Kadina, a nice town close to Snowtown. At Kadina we stayed with my Dad’s youngest sister Doris and her husband Gary and caught up with more family goss. We spent one day visiting Snowtown. This brought back many memories especially when we called in on Auntie Phyl and her daughter Gail and they kindly showed us round the town. It had changed a fair bit since I was last there but the pub where my Uncle Ron was the publican remains the same. We also used this time to take a quick detour to Ardrossan to see Auntie Thelma, another of my Dad’s sisters.
Then it was off to Adelaide where we stayed with Marty’s Mum and Dad to helped them celebrate Marty’s Dad’s 80th birthday. On the way we called into see Marty’s cousin Sue and her family at Freeling. They hadn’t seen each other for at least 18 years. They kindly allowed us to leave our trailer under their huge carport. The birthday celebrations were wonderful and allowed us to catch up with a lot of Marty’s family’s friends, including Dale and Megan who flew over to Adelaide for the celebration. But the visiting didn’t stop. Whilst in Adelaide we caught up our friends Peter and Deirdre who we don’t see often enough and who had given us good advice and what to see in WA. We also caught up with my cousin Roger and his wife Bobby, my Uncle John and Aunt Nanette, Marty’s cousin Jo and her family, Megan’s friend Jemma and her husband George and did lots of shopping. After meeting so many of my rellies we managed to find time to catch up with Marty’s one-time high school English teacher.
After the birthday party we headed to Melbourne to have Christmas with two of our kids Dale and Megan. On the way we went back to Freeling and Sue’s for another night and to collect our camper. We found out that their local publican was my cousin Brenton so went to the local for tea and had a yarn to him.
On route to Melbourne we free camped at the base of the Grampians at a place called Staplyton Camp Ground.
It was a lovely spot, so nice and quiet where we sat and watched the sunset and the little blue wrens dancing about. There was a short walking track that we did and once again we saw some great Aboriginal rock art.
In Melbourne we dropped the trailer off at our Darwin friends' (Chris and Lyn) Melbourne retreat in Moonee Ponds and then stayed with our daughter Megan at Elwood. Lots of beach walks and a bit of geocaching eventuated.
We celebrated Christmas in Melbourne with Dale & Megan.
Christmas Eve we visited the South Melbourne Markets to make sure that we had enough food and goodies for Christmas Day. On Christmas Day we were up early and packed ready to head on into the Royal Botanic Gardens, after staking our claim under one of the many shady trees in the Gardens we set up for the day, with all our pressies under the tree. We spent the day just eating, relaxing and more eating; to finish off the day we were given a tour of the Gardens by our own personal guide.
Boxing Day Marty and Dale were off to the cricket at the MCG
while Megan and I joined the 20,000 plus shoppers at the post Christmas sales, too many people and not enough bargains, we headed home empty handed, well almost Megan did find a nice pair of shoes.
Tuesday 27 December we are back on the road again for some more adventures.
