Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in
Australia and New Zealand
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Deane & Jack's Motorcycle Trip in Australia and New Zealand |
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April 1 - In & around Adelaide, and to Port Pirie, South Australia 257 km (160 Miles) |
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Today was a day to look around Adelaide for part of a day, and to use the good Internet Cafe we found. Then we had already planned to ride this 160 miles to shorten tomorrow's ride (about 400 miles, instead of 560 miles - with almost no towns in between). Adelaide is a very pretty town, very clean, with green lawns, bushes and trees, wide streets, nice homes, and well kept businesses. It is our favorite city so far. Riding north out of Adelaide brought us first to broad, flat, grazing areas, and then to very large farms which grow wheat and maybe other grains. This area reminds me of northern Idaho or eastern Washington, of the lower wheat-raising areas of Canada. All of the fields were plowed, and seeded, ready to grow. Remember, this is Fall down here, looking forward to Winter for moisture, as these are all dry-farming fields. Temperatures for riding are getting higher, in the mid-70 degrees F, in a transition to very warm weather. After riding mainly in the 50's and low 60's for the last couple of weeks, tomorrow's ride to Coober Pedy may be hot - we'll see. Our destination today was Port Pirie, a port that ships grain, and used to be a very important port - it still may be. This town has done a beautiful job of restoring turn of the 20th century buildings to their former glory. In the photos that follow, you will see a date of 1904, so I guess these buildings were built then, and had their glory days with the railroad at that time.
The next photo shows the building built in 1904.
And this one, just a beautiful old building restored carefully.
This church building was up for sale or demolition, so a restaurateur named Bill bought it and it is now "Barnacle Bill's" fish restaurant. We met Bill, and he said he would rather the building be saved than demolished, and he had done an excellent of preserving it, while making the restaurant quite pleasant, in what had been the sanctuary.
OK, now for "Road Trains". We had heard of "Road Trains" running on our route, and today we saw the first of them. These are oversize trucks and trailers, sometimes with two trailers and sometimes with three trailers. To get a feel for how big they are, I count number of wheels per "Train", to compare with truck/trailer rigs in other countries. The first one I saw was a "tank truck", with huge tanks. I think that was a 30-wheeler. - compare that with 18-wheelers in the U.S. Then, there are two-trailer rigs with 34 wheels, and the BIG ones have three trailers, and are 46-wheelers!! (Some of these are carrying either grain from this area, or zinc from "the zinc mine" near Port Pirie.) All of these categories carry identification on the front bumper and back bumper that says "Truck Train". We understand that we will see these for at least the next 1,000 miles and further, so we have to be careful with these monsters. We are looking forward to tomorrow, to see Coober Pedy, the underground opal-mining town. |
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