Port Pirie – South Australia

As mentioned in previous posts we like to make a base to explore surrounding areas. Our base this time was at the Port Pirie Beach Caravan Park for a couple of days. Port Pirie was another one of those towns where we could stock up with all the things we required before heading on.

Port Pirie has some wonderful history and even more intriguing are some of the facades of the buildings. Especially the ‘Family and Shipping Butcher’ building, established in 1864. Check out the facade of this building. There are also other buildings such as the old Post Office and the Port Pirie Station which is now a museum. You can enjoy the heritage of Port Pirie by taking the self-guided walking tour.

We spent a day exploring the quaint towns of the Southern Flinders Ranges.

The first stop of call was at the town of Wilmington. It’s surrounded by some absolutely beautiful landscape and it was also christened by European settlers of the 1800’s as ‘Beautiful Valley’.

This place has South Australia’s oldest ‘Toy Museum’ which was unfortunately not open on the day we went through. It’s also a place where they have the odd Rodeo Show or two. The historic Wilmington Hotel was a place where Graeme had a chat with a very festive harmless (armless) lady. Unfortunately for Graeme it was a one way chat 🤭.

Just a couple of kilometres out of town is a great little Caravan Park called the Stony Creek Bush Camp. It looked great.

Stony Creek Bush Camp

The next town was Melrose apparently the oldest town in the Flinders and first impressions were of a beautiful historic tranquil town. I think we met one of the oldest local inhabitants too sitting on his verandah. Sorry no pics allowed📷.

The Melrose Showground has a designated camping area that looked like it would be great for Carvanners, including big rigs and campers. From the park are some well-formed and easy walking trails that lead into town. Along the walk you can enjoy stopping in at the heritage museum and appreciate older buildings including, Blundstones Blacksmith Shop and the North Star Hotel.

The town of Melrose is renowned for its mountain biking community because from what we read it has a number of complex and challenging trails.

Melrose

Next we stopped at Wirrabara. This is a place that can easily be by-passed as we nearly did. But I am so glad we stopped. We were looking for a lunch stop, and Graeme had suggested if we find a bakery ‘let’s have a local pie’. Well guess what? Just as we were about to head out of town I saw a bakery so we turned around and headed back for lunch.

Julia’s Kitchen Wirrabara – WOW it was great. Julia is full of local knowledge and also makes an awesome meat pie. We were so glad we had stopped at Julia’s Kitchen. This town has a lot going for it and Julia told us that they have just been told the town has been granted money to paint the Silos in the town. This, from what we found out may not happen until later in 2018 but the town is hoping it will bring more tourists to the area.

Julias Kitchen Wirrabara

Our last stop before heading back to Port Pirie was a town called Laura. This town has seen many balladeers spending time here. One such balladeer was Australian poet C J Dennis. He has been immortalised by a larger than life copper statue which you won’t miss as it has pride of place in the main street. So many of these wonderful old towns have wide streets and Laura is no exception.

C J Dennison – Laura SA

We had a great time exploring the wonderful towns through the Southern Flinders Ranges.

Below are a list of others places we have visited that may be of interest to you:

Cheers

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Happy Aussie Caravanning Lifestyle

Dixie and Graeme