After our first stop in South Australia, Cobber Pedy, next stop was the famous Flinders Ranges and Wilpena pound. We met Eric and Michelle Wilkes who are dad’s friends at Wilpena pound. We actually stayed about 17km out of the pound at Rawnsley Park Station. That night we had dinner with Eric and Michelle. We had gnocchi bolognese and for dessert we had chocolate brownies!
The next day we had a quick swim before Eric and dad departed to do a walk up one of the higher mountains of Wilpena pound. Four hours later mum decided that dad and Eric had been gone for a bit too long so she turned on the radio but before she could speak dad spoke and he said “Kristen, Kristen” and mum replied “Yes”. Dad then said “Eric has sprained his ankle very badly, so can you please get the ice pack from the fridge and take it to the camp freezer”. Mum asked us to do that job because our bikes were down so we whizzed down the hill to the camp kitchen to put the ice packs in the freezer. After we did that Sam went back to the caravan and I went down another hill super fast to Eric’s cabin just in time to see Dad and Eric arrive home.
This is the view from St’ Mary’s Peak.
A few days later Dad, Mum, Sam and I climbed the tallest mountain in Wilpena Pound which is only one kilometre shorter than the highest mountain in Australia. There were great views from the top because it was 1171 m above sea level.
On our way to Melrose we stopped in at Wilmington to try to find a puppet museum but before that we found a toy museum which the whole family liked except for Mum. Dad liked the Willies jeep and the Land Rovers. That’s weird? This is not an Army jeep Museum this is a toy museum. This is just it’s name – it actually is a pretty much has everything museum. It has slot cars, model trains and Thunderbird toys. The thing I liked the most was that they had repaired two of the 1980’s Willies Jeeps so much so that they could start successfully and drive successfully.
And now for the Puppet Museum!! Luckily the puppet museum was not too far away from the toy museum so we could walk there. I reckon it’s funny when you have to ring a doorbell eleven times before a person opens the door, but anyway that’s what happened to us. After he let us in he told us a bit of the history of how he and his wife started collecting puppets just after they retired. They also told us that they had collected puppets for about 15 years! They had over 1000 puppets and they get them by the gold coin donations that you have to put in to see a tour of the puppets. They had puppets for “Over the hedge”, Shrek, some Boxing puppets, Punch and Judy and 1000 Muppet puppets! Then we headed on to Melrose.
Then we drove south to a place called Melrose and we stayed next to a footie field and some sheds. This was lucky because it rained and we got play Lego for the whole next day in the shed because it was forecast to hail. Luckily it didn’t actually hail at Melrose but it did hail at Port Augusta and Port Pirie. Firstly I did not know what hail was so I had to ask mum and dad. The information that they gave me was very interesting. They said hail forms when two storm fronts crash into each other and when you go up it gets colder so the water in the cloud freezes and then the little balls of ice fall to the ground as hail.
After Melrose we were going to Peterborough but we decided to detour because the people from the Toy museum told about a toy festival in Clare called ‘Hobbies Alive’. So we went to ‘hobbies alive’ and some people from Melbourne came up with some remote-controlled earth moving equipment to make a road over a dirt mound.
We also saw a man inside a three metre long submarine.
We were lucky enough to also get a ride on a miniature steam train that went at about 10 km/hr.
We also got to ride on a steam powered tracker that was also miniature.
Last we saw the people from the Toy Museum and he had made his own little remote-controlled 4WD. He decided to interfere with the earth moving equipment, unluckily his 4WD didn’t have enough traction to climb up the dirt mound, but on the up side it did have its own miniature centre differential lock.
Next he advised us to go and see inside a shed that other people had pack with models of all shapes and sizes. The models in the first room were mainly of cars and planes and in the next room there were model train tracks with lots of remote-controlled model trains. The track was very long and it had a tunnel on one side and a train yard on the other.
Next mum went shopping and then we headed off to Peterborough also known as Steamtown. At the caravan park there was a really good playground. It was really cool because it was big and it had lots of play equipment that was really fun to play on! The next day we went to Steamtown Heritage Rail Centre S.A. Firstly we went on a tour around the centre which was very interesting. We saw heapes of black steam engines.
It has the only working 3 gauge turntable in the world! The reason they built Steamtown in Peterborough and not somewhere else in SA was because five railways all met in Peterborough. That night we watched the supposedly awesome sound and light show that was actually pretty lame because it just was a documentary with pretty rubbish sound quality and at the end of the show different coloured lights came on for each of the engines and a smoke machine came on.
We also went up Magnetic Hill backwards.
Bye from James.
