22 March 2000

Again bright, sunny, breezy morning in Port Augusta. Change came through in afternoon and weather became progressively more cloudy and began to drizzle later.

While ute in for service, spent day around port Augusta township and CBD just wandering around and admiring architecture and history of old buildings.

One of the places we visited was the Curdnatta Art and Pottery Gallery. This wasn't bad, and there were some particularly nice pen and pastel drawings by a local artist whose name now escapes me. The building the gallery is housed in was opened in 1878 and was Port Augusta's first railway station known, oddly enough, as the Railway Terminus.

The Wadlata Outback Centre was also very good. This is at the local tourist information centre and has apparently won a number of awards for its presentation of the history of the Flinders Ranges and outback South Australia. It is in the form of a time tunnel, commencing with prehistoric times and moving through the various geological periods to the aboriginal Dream Time, and then on to the arrival of Europeans and their settlement and use of the land for agricultural and mining pursuits. The displays and the way they convey their information are very well put together and there is a theatrette showing a very good short documentary. There are plenty of "hands-on" (yuk!) displays, and Lorraine made quite a sight operating an old pedal radio in the School of the Air display. Although I must admit she was better than me, who could not make myself understood operating the morse key in the telegraph display. All in all, a very interesting hour and a half or so.

Picked up ute around 3:30 p.m. Everything OK, just a routine service.

Off north tomorrow. Should make Coober Pedy for tomorrow night, then Alice Springs on Friday.