Sparrow Lorelei and Robin Artemis photo gallery

Port Lincoln and the National Druid Assembly, 5-11 October 2011
Day 5 and 6: on the road home again

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Sunday afternoon

After lunch on Sunday (which I managed to scavenge for Sparrow early, with the willing connivance of the chief cook), James and I talked a bit and we decided that we should leave the Assembly early. It was a hard decision as the main celebration was still to come that night, but I was fairly sure it was the right one. So the kids were both more than ready for their afternoon nap, we put everything in the car and headed out.

Cowell

We drove as far as Cowell before they woke up, and stayed at the Jade Motel there for the night with dinner at the local pub. Excellent food, and the rib-eye steak was massive! but James and I did have a laugh that once again we ended up eating rather much later than intended through a combination of kitchen opening hours and "helpfulness". One day soon we will get to eat dinner before I run out of energy and collapse... We spent the time between arriving and the hotel kitchen starting dinners playing in the playground on the foreshore. In the morning we looked at the jade in the motel showroom (there are jade mines in the range to the west). It was remarkably uninspiring and soulless, no raw rock or sense of variety in cut or style, just lots of jade ovals stuck onto low-quality pressed settings that you see in every tourist town. The only difference was that they had twenty of each style instead of one or two. I did find a set that I liked though. While it was still cliched, it did reflect Cowell's other main industry - aquaculture, particularly oysters. We skipped seeing the quandong farm and the tractor museum because we were ready to get going and couldn't remember what else there was in Cowell that had caught my attention - it seemed like we'd seen it all as we drove from the motel to the foreshore!

Port Augusta

Our first stop in Port August was the Arid Lands Botanic Garden. I really wanted to have another look around there, I've only been once before. Sparrow fell asleep just before we got to the town though, so I took Robin in and left her sleeping in the car with James. The theory was that she'd be better off for the sleep than being dragged around a hot garden. But when I got inside I saw the lovely restaurant with quandong icecream and wished I could tell James to come on in for lunch. I changed Robin and was just stopping to feed him when James and Sparrow came in - she hadn't slept long after all - so we had lunch first then all did a little walk. Robin was very keen to eat the menu. Sparrow was a little naughty because she was still quite tired, and demolished most of her quandong smoothie before I realised it had been made with icecream and not yoghurt so her eating for the day was a little erratic too. (She ended up eating a lot of the quandong leather I bought, and got very good at saying the word "quandong" while asking for it.) Once fed we went out past the special sundial (I can't remember the name for it), and took the blue walk past several gardens showcasing different regions of outback flora up to a little lookout.

Views from the lookout.

On the way back into town we saw a bearded dragon on the road, who was very patient about letting me get a close-up. Then we went and found the central park and toilets of Port Augusta, where both children exercised and played on the grass each in their own style.