Day Six – Thursday 25th April – Lyrup Flats to Melrose Heading north and finally a campfire!

After enjoying a glorious dawn (why was I up so early I ask?) I made a lovely cup of tea and watched the pelicans swooping over the Murray River looking for their breakfast. Ewan decided to shatter the peace and quiet by hand-grinding the coffee beans selected by Liz (Patricia’s beans for those interested!) Why would hand-grinding coffee be noisy I hear you ask??!! Well the answer is that Ewan has adapted a battery-powered drill to attach to the hand grinder to save the muscle power and time required to grind the beans by hand. Good grief!!! So much for the serenity…. After lots of coffee we were up and on the road early….well relatively early for us! We did our usual search for bakery and coffee for morning tea and found it at Morgan: very impressed with the coffee and custard tarts. Then on to the historic Burra for lunch. My memory was of a town with magnificent stone buildings, wide streets and a lovely atmosphere …..and it didn’t disappoint. It was ANZAC Day so the cenotaph in the centre of town had many colourful wreaths. We wandered around enjoying the architecture and ambience.

Then it was back on the road headed for Melrose - our next step. All that stood in our way was yet more acres of wheat stubble, mallee gums, salt scrub and - for something new - hundreds of wind turbines! They are truly amazing and we were surprised to see so many of them spinning in the distance for hundreds of kilometres. I was concerned that some weren’t turning at all and suggested that they may need some WD40 or similar to get them to run more smoothly. It seemed a perfectly reasonable suggestion to me!!However, Ewan informed me that they deliberately stop some by repositioning them when they don’t require the power. Its very hypnotic watching the slowly turning blades on hundreds of turbines and they were surprisingly entertaining on a long journey. We headed towards the southern end of the Flinders Ranges: a faint blue line in the distance for quite a while. We’re in the very busy Melrose Campground at the base of Mt. Remarkable. As it is the last week of the SA school holidays and a long weekend for Anzac Day the Campground is very busy with lots of families. Part of the attraction is that Melrose is known as the mountain bike centre of SA. That means everyone from 2 year olds to the elderly (but not us!) is dressed in bike gear. In the campground that means lots of small children and teenagers racing along tracks that surround it. Wandering around without looking is not a good idea as you are likely to be knocked over by a small kid on a bike! Unfortunately, Jude and Graeme have issues with the power in their van so Ewan and Graeme spent several hours diagnosing the problem. I would tell you what the problem is but it all sounds like Martian to me! We also have a problem with a disappearing brake light, but not brakes. Ewan is in his element trying to solve any mechanical problem. He and Graeme look very serious and use language the rest of us don't understand. The rest of us have given up trying to look interested and just get on with something we else! The good news is that we finally lit a campfire and toasted marshmallows. We still haven’t christened Liz’s new jaffle iron but that’s something to look forward to. My hands are freezing up again so it's time for warming-up near the campfire, and putting on the thermals before jumping into bed!! Looking forward to another great day ….and a hot shower…tomorrow Your optimistic but slightly grubby correspondent Dianne