Mt Ive - The Gawler Bush

A beautiful drive into the Gawler Ranges, north of the Eyre Peninsula, got us to the remote Mt Ive homestead. We stopped for lunch beside the road and the single vehicle that stopped was a local farmer with a laconic attitude. He warned us about road trains and the danger of being parked there, so I said we'd finish eating and be on our way. The farmer's response was: "You take your chances". The road kicked up clouds of dust and, at one point, we wondered if the narrow, rocky surface was going to peter out and prove the farmer right with us having no chance! En route we saw a couple of cars, including a German couple whose 4wd was losing water. We were the first car they had seen all day.

At the homestead, goating or goat mustering was in full swing, and a goaty scent hung in the air.
Hot water was supplied by an outdoor, wood-fired, donkey boiler where there was a sign: don't burn my ass, one log at a time.

We managed to get the access road key to reach a huge salt lake, Lake Gairdner, which is a mecca for speed racing fans. An hour of driving through dust tracks across saltbush terrain, got us to the lake shore for a fabulous sunset. We saw a Taiwanese couple there taking selfies - apparently the lake is famous in Taiwan as the location for a Taiwanese pop idol film shoot.

We camped on the lakeshore and sunrise wowed us with the play of shadow and light across the salt ridges of waves halted midflow by evaporation.

The weekend had temperatures high in the C 40s, so we took Bluey, our campervan, to its offroad limit, then abandoned the van and continued on foot for an early hike to the rhyolite organ pipe rocks, then returned to the shade of the station and iced drinks from our eskie.

Throughout the afternoon we watched the wild goats in the stockyard. Magnificent billy goats with dangling crown jewels, flowing goatee beard, and flaring tempers, cavorted and chased each other and nanny goats between wailing kids. Vocalisations from the goats varied from 'heeeelp' to 'baaad'. Given their final destination is shipment by sea to Saudi Arabian meatworks, I could understand the desperate calls.

 

Working with Internet and associated hardware is a mixed blessing: it works in amazingly remote places, then again it may refuse to function. Robert has a Telstra mobile broadband usb dongle which gave up the ghost just a few weeks after purchase. He then went through long Internet chat sessions with the company to get some redress. These chats were typed in on screen. The original purchase had been through a reseller, known throughout Australia, called Dick Smith. Robert noticed when he typed in the name it came out as **** Smith on the chat screen. Obviously not all chats keep the language clean!

The dongle dingdong was amicably settled by Justin, a star employee of Dick Smith in Elizabeth, SA, who simply replaced the dead dongle. He also passed comment that Telstra shop staff are about as useful as a wheel on a walking stick!