Safari 2019 September 6th

Friday, September 6th 2019

We have enjoyed our 2 days here and John was able to recognise/identify 2 of the mallee trees...Blue Leaved Mallee and Narrow Leaved Red Mallee. In fact here at Pink Lakes, the Blue Leaved Mallee is considered to be 'rare'.

I  felt quite sad leaving the Murray River National Park this morning. My thoughts went back to Margaret Craigie who reared five children here on her own. Her husband had gone to the Gold Fields to make some money for his family, but how difficult it would have been in such dry and barren conditions to grow food or go to buy it, and so it goes on...'how difficult'. My heart goes out to such brave mothers.

Wind, Wind and more wind. Yes it has been blowing all day. 
The rows and rows of grape vines in the Berri and Loxton area were beginning to shoot green ready for the coming fruit season. Bring on some Australian fresh grapes, then we won't see Californian varieties available in the shops.
Loxton streets had a great display of Wood Wardie trees showing their large yellow blooms.

We drove south in South Australia. The Mallee bush, as always, gives me great pleasure. After crossing the border at Pinaroo, we continued east to Murrayville where we stopped for lunch..it was still windy and rainy as well. 

View of Dust storm (left) & Rain storm (right)

Lake Hardy - A Pink Lake

Our plan was to continue on to the Pink Lakes for camping. The weather was atrocious. We could see a dust storm ahead of us to the left and to the right there was a dark rain storm. We wondered whether to continue, but from radio broadcasts it seems the whole state was being 'blown' with high winds. The camp sites were really quite attractive and looked out over a Pink Lake. We will stay the night here and listen to the wind here as anywhere else!