Warrnambool, Victoria to Port Augusta, South Australia - 965 kms 10:35 hours.
Today will take me into South Australia and I will keep going till I reach Port Augusta. I did try to hug the coast. I drove along the Coorong but bypassed Cape Jarvis. I reached close to Port Augusta by sunset.
I set out at 9:30 AM as usual. Little before noon, I slipped into South Australia. Slipped is a good description - usually, state borders are characterised by Quarantine Stations that aggressively check for fresh fruit. Here, there was an unmanned quarantine bin.
I haven't clipped out the GPS coordinates in the video - so you can see the border appears to be at longitude 140.96975 E. The offical border for South Australia is supposed to be the 141 E meridian. But due to inaccuracies in measuring this when it was done in 1847 meant the line was off by a few kms. Efforts by South Australia to have the border adjusted failed in court. So now, the border between South Australia and New South Wales as well as between South Australia and Queensland is the 141 meridian but for Victoria it is not. Zoom right into the corner of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia and you will see the borders do not align!
To confuse matters further, if you were to drive to the border between New South Wales and South Australia, your GPS will still not show 141.00000 E. That is because the state borders use an Australian standard (AGD66/84) while your GPS uses a standard that works better for the GPS satellites (WGS84). The two are usually off by about 200 metres - a distance that is burned into every Australian surveyor's brain. Travel 200 metres west and your GPS will show the round figure.
Even the landscape changes abruptly at the border. Sparse gum trees give way to ranks of frowning pine trees a la Will Ogilvie's ballad, The Death of Ben Hall. It was early in the evening I stopped for my first break at the OTR service station at Tallem Bend. As service stations go, this was a lot nicer. Real coffee. The Traveller's Pie was finished in an air fryer. And you could eat it all at the back, in the open, overlooking the Murray River. You can see it in the picture below - I have already finished my coffee. And there is my usual lunch of pie (or a sausage roll) with an iced coffee and a sports drink for later. And in the background is the vista of an open field and the Murray running right next.
With the draconian speed limits of Victoria behind me, the drive was a lot more relaxing. And to top it all, with my entry into South Australia, I had gained half an hour. The timezone in South Australia is an odd 30 minutes behind. It was dusk when I got a call from my motel - they were wondering what time I would be checking in. That was nice of them - I told them my GPS says about 9 PM. They were fine with it. But along the way, at around 8:45 PM, some windmills came into view and the sun began to set. This meant I had to stop to take pictures of the sunset.
A train track runs in parallel to the road. Every side road to the north means a railroad crossing
Traffic was light but there were a few vehicles passing my car parked off the road.
All the time, it steadily got darker till it was time to get back on to the road and head towards my motel.
Arriving well after 9 PM, the reception was still manned. It is a bit hard to judge the quality of motels but the Majestic Ocean Apartments was sure a class above the usual ones I end up in. Inspite of the half hour advantage, rather than go straight to bed, I lazed around in a relatively luxurious room made a phone call or two and, true to my nature, turned in late.
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