Rocket man

 

Thursday 11 August 2022  - Rocket man

We made another early start as the boys were keen to spend as much time in Woomera as their wives would let them.  Hence we were standing in the outside display museum looking at rockets, planes, satellites etc at 8.30am when it was still pretty chilly.

Jenny found looking at each display for a couple of minutes more than sufficient, the boys needed three times as long. J&M therefore headed for the heritage museum and cafe (and toilets!) after about half an hour of standing in the biting wind.  The indoor museum also had rockets but also stuff that was more interesting for Jenny such as the history of the town, its planning and about its people and those who worked at the base including a surprising number of women who had jobs as computers and also as trackers of rockets using machinery to scan the sky and photograph the rockets as they were launched.  One woman is quoted as saying she was white climbing onto the machine and whiter getting down as I imagine there would be a bit of street involved in not tracking the rocket correctly.  After all, you can’t really call “Sorry, I didn’t quite track that. Can we do it again?”

It’s the 75^th anniversary of Woomera’s existence this year so I bought a souvenir stubby holder and then we sat in the nice warm cafe and had morning tea including two yummy hot hash browns for Jen (the others had boring muffins).

We drove around the streets of Woomera and there are still quite a few houses and a lot that look inhabited but the large grid pattern and old bus stops suggested that there had once been a lot more.  Larry had a little bit of PTSD as there are still a number of single men’s quarters in two storey blocks of flats that reminded L of his days on the RAAF training base at Wagga.  We did also see a few air force personnel around town dressed in their blue camo fatigues. Not sure why they were blue in camouflage material as, if anything, it makes them even more visible!

Even the boys were Woomera’d out by about 11am so we headed south and out of town.  We drove for an hour or so and then stopped for a stretch of the legs and to get away from the continual line of trucks hurtling up and down the Stuart Highway for a while.  Jenny then took over the driving and got the best fuel economy of the trip with her light foot.  No, not really, it was because there was a fierce tail wind that practically pushed the car and van down the road!  That was all well and good until we hit Port Augusta and turned west and suddenly the wind was hitting us from the side and throwing the van all over the road.

Luckily by then it was about lunchtime so we pulled over in a rest stop and ate lunches in our vans because of the howling wind.  At this point we decided that, as we had made such good time, we should push on past Kimba and have two nights at Wudinna instead. That meant we could have a day off from packing up vans and be a bit closer to the Gawler Range National Park as well.  There also didn’t seem to be much point to being anywhere other than inside the nice warm car and by now we had hit a huge weather front and it rained and rained as we drove. The good thing about so much water hitting us and the van and being on the road being swished up under us was that all the caked on mud was washed away and we were happy to get to Kimba and get out to see shiny new vans behind us.

We refuelled at the Pink Galah roadhouse and then rushed indoors to use the facilities as a bus load of oldies had just pulled in.  We got to the toilets before then but not to the queue for the coffee/bakery so we made do with cups of tea from the thermos instead.  The rain was still coming down so we weren’t sorry to pass by the free camping spot we had planned to stay at (although it did look very nice) and push on to Wudinna instead.  We have been listening to Eddie Betts’ autobiography “The boy from Boomerang Terrace” and he had got to the bit where he was discussing the infamous Adelaide football club training camp at the beginning of 2018 where the players were subjected to ‘cult-like’ behaviours.  Very interesting hearing Eddie’s perspective on it.

As we headed west we could see the edge of the storm front and it was only gentle showers as we made it to Wudinna.  We camped up at the Showgrounds right next to the footy oval and there was power and access to water, a dump point and very clean amenities including a hot shower where you could pay a couple of bucks for a 2 minute hot shower.

It was too cold and blustery still to eat outside so H&M’s van became the kitchen and our van became the dining room and we had a very nice chicken dish and lots of wine to warm us up.  Early to bed as no campfire to sit around and we are all tired from two early morning starts in a row.