Posted February 11, 2013 by taraustralis2 Comments South Australia

Was my life worth an $8 burger?

So where’d we finish up the other night…

Ok – so half way through ‘Day Two’ away from Port Lincoln, smooth highways and bliss. They keep it real in South Australia, you never know what you’ll come across on the roads, after all, as they keep reminding us…

DROWSY DRIVERS DIE… and there are heaps of these signs around the country… and since there are so many of these signs, you start humming along to the Melbourne safety ad campaign made for the trains.

And then…..

Helloooo – dirt roads and rally-car driving!!!

Later on our travels, we found this empty little beauty!

Ehem, it was a bit ‘rough’ on the inside. Not sure what the house was really being used for but it looks like Jesus is the new owner. (Was Jesus a possible hoarder?)

Then we continued onward with my driving, and spent the next hour crawling up a dirt road going to see the Sea Lions.

We really didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t really pay much attention to the signs on the way that give you the distance. Yeah, 34k’s of pure washboard dirt road bumping all the way. I did everything I could, swerving, driving half on the side.. then on the other side… nope – nothing worked. It was incredibly bumpy. You get to the point when you’re driving and you think…. Is it worth it? Should we turn back? I didn’t have a clue how close or far we really were, but we kept going and eventually, we got there.

We made it to the Sea Lions. They’re lazy. They lay around all day and soak up the rays. They don’t do much. We spoke with a few locals. They said that there have been many tourists that walk up to the Sea Lions and start to poke them – one lady even thought they were dead. Anyway, it normally ends in a missing hand and a day at the hospital. Not that great if you’re traveling and want to see the country side. The best advice, keep your hands and feet at a safe distance. We certainly did, because we were on top of a cliff looking down. I only got the picture above because I had a telephoto lens!

We kept on trekking down South – We decided that we wanted to go back to Coffin Bay for a bit of camping. The views there are incredible.

And my phone overheated… No biggie. I’ll just put it away for a bit. Probably best it doesn’t hang out on the dashboard for long periods of time.

Then, we found this daggy little shop. I deemed it too much like a potential murder scene to take any photos, but thinking back, it probably would have been the best thing I could have done. My co-pilot got an eight dollar burger and we drove off. Now, it took a bit of time to make the eight dollar burger. I did have an inkling that the lady making it was outside slashing the tires.. but, when we got back outside, everything seemed okay.

After about ten minutes of driving… it happened. The steering went wonky. It was like the axle broke and we had to pull over.

Oh wait… what’s that? Do I hear the hissing of a flat tire? Yep. Holy shit. Fix the tire fast… the scary people from the creepy store are on their way! I could hear the hiss and see it start to deflate before my eyes. There was a HUGE gash in the side, about the size of a pin head.

So we had to make a super quick organised unpack of the car! After some muscle pumps and and a few swats at the flies hovering about… we swapped out the tire….loaded the car back up and sped off down the road like race car drivers! Was it the eight dollar burger lady? We’ll never know… but, luckily, they didn’t get to us this time!