Sparrow Lorelei and Robin Artemis photo gallery
Port Lincoln and the National Druid Assembly, 5-11 October 2011
Day 1 and 2: Melbourne to Port Lincoln
Return to Robin's index -
Return to Sparrow's indexThe National Druid Assembly was held at Cooringal Grove in Port Lincoln, South Australia on the first weekend of October. We flew to Adelaide then drove a rental car up to Port Augusta and down the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln. There used to be a ferry from Adelaide to Port Lincoln but right now there isn't. So we had a seven hour drive. Not that I minded - the inland areas of South Australia include some of my (admittedly many) favourite places in this country, and I hadn't been through the area for four years now.
The airports leg
Sparrow was really keen to ride a bus. She'd been going on about riding a bus for the last week. Luckily, there is a bus from the long term carpark at the airport to the terminal. There wasn't much room on it, just one seat free - so the kids double-deckered up on James.
In the terminal, after check in and security, waiting near the gate watching the planes. We can see so many planes through this window! Look, Daddy, it's a plane!
Adelaide airport. Robin slept the whole flight and was quite cheerful when we got here. Sparrow magically made her jumper vanish, so we spent some time hunting for it on the plane and in the airport. I went to take a picture of her wearing my jumper (which hung down to her ankles), but she had ditched that too by the time I got my phone turned back on. Now we're just regathering and working out where the changeroom is before going to get our rental car.
Port Pirie
Lunch was sandwiches that I'd packed and brought with us, eaten in the car - and then one little girl fell fast asleep just as we left Adelaide, and stayed asleep until just before Port Pirie. Robin slept that whole way too. So we covered most of our expected distance quite early. And then we spent a lot of time at Port Pirie. This playground was wonderful. You could play chasy on it for just ages, both over and under it. Both kids enjoyed a good long time here, and both had a good play. Though Sparrow did lose her bandaid - a matter of some distress, so we eventually left the playground so that we could go get a new one and cover up that scary scar (which is pretty much healed now). We made a brief stop at Coles to buy nappies (which we chose not to pack in our airplane luggage), and then drove on to Port Augusta.
Port Augusta
We drove around in circles a little in Port Augusta. There's an east side and a west side, either side of the very tip of the Spencer Gulf. I was going from memory and wasn't on the side I thought I was. But we found an excellent playground, and watched kids jumping off the bridge (probably illegally) and generally horsing around and having a great time. Then we had dinner at Barnacle Bills, one of the places we'd spotted when cruising the town looking for places to eat. I tried putting Robin in a highchair, I think for the first or nearly the first time, but he's still not strong enough to sit in one for more than a few minutes. So instead he sat on my lap, and managed to grab my water glass and pour it all over me. After dinner we went to the motel we'd also picked out on that disoriented (but educational) town jaunt and stayed the night. The next morning we had breakfast - muesli bought from the roadhouse and eaten from mugs :-) - then packed up, went and had another play at the playground and drove on.
Whyalla
In hindsight, it would all have gone much smoother if when we got to Whyalla we'd just let James out for a brief toilet stop and then kept driving. But I bundled us out of the car to go see the big ship, as Sparrow was keen. One little girl was very tired though and got very cranky, and Robin was cranky about being woken, and we couldn't see the ship anyway (there was a tour, but not toddler-friendly). So the next hour of driving was less happy. But we did have a nice short play in the garden at the info centre anyway. Then we drove on through the gathering rain, watching the showers run south-west to north-east over the saltbush plain.
Port Neill
Port Neill was our last stop before Port Lincoln. It's very much a holiday homes town, by the look of it - lots of houses, lots more than the population would suggest, but barely any signs of life. We had lunch at the pub across the road from the jetty and playground. Sparrow was very concerned that we go to the playground first. She's standing there saying "Hey guys, let's go playground. No, guys, *playground*". We talked her into having lunch first as it was already quite late for eating. Robin liked the floor of the hotel, and (as usual) desperately wanted our lunches. Poor boy, his digestive system just can't mature fast enough. And then we did indeed go to the playground.
