Time to leave the lovely coastal town of Robe, with its beautiful historic houses and buildings, all immaculately preserved and maintained. More great memories of a great place.

It's time to move north towards the Murray, and Mannum, where we note the temperature is almost double anything we have had for the past couple of weeks, so liking that!

We stopped in Kingston to fuel up and of course had to take a photo of the Big Lobster and admit to wanting to buy lobster from Robe but it is so damned pricey, so couldn't resist a Lobster Sandwich from the truck stop.   Mmmmm, was it really worth the money.   Ah, no! Killed it with lettuce to bulk it up.

The drive is 297km and would have taken about 4 hours however, we needed a little break after a couple of hours and Bill pulled in what looked like a rest area road.   Nope, that it was not!   The crushed limestone gravel road had seen better days and after half a km of trying to find some place to turn around with a 21.5 ft caravan, we decided to carry on for a bit through this scrubby bush and lake area to see what was ahead.   I found our location, via GPS, and saw we were on Loop Road.   Loop it did, but we had 16km more before the loop was completed.  

I lifted my head from my iPad in time to see two big startled emus (and they are really big) come crashing out of the brush on our left.   Like the roos, they tend to run alongside the car, for a little bit, and then onto the road in front of you.   Due to the crap road, we were only going really slowly, so there was no danger of us hitting them.   They ended up on the road in front of us, their running pace lessening when they realised there was no threat, and ended up wandering off into open scrub.  

It is amazing how many times we have taken a wrong turn, or decided to explore an unmarked road, that we see something so unique and worthwhile!

It took around 6km of driving on this corrugated gravel road before Bill found an educated choice of road side, and managed a perfect 3 point turn.   He is amazing and never ceases to amaze me with what he knows and can do!   Don't ever tell him I said that!

We drove through Coorong Lakes region, fascinating drive and landscape and arrived in Mannum which is so pretty, sitting on the banks of the Murray with houseboats and paddle-steamers cruising up and down tooting their whistles.   I think I must be in an American movie on the Mississippi!

When we got to the caravan park, we both went about our set up chores and I unlocked the van to do my thing.   Mmmm small white stones on the couch.   That's funny, a couple on the floor too.   Nope, I hadn't left the grocery cupboard unlocked.   A taste - yes, salt.   What has happened?   Opened the cupboard carefully but nothing was going to stop all the rock salt from spilling all over me.   That damned corrugated road had unscrewed the lid of a brand new salt grinder.   I had tightened the lid when I bought it, to make sure it was tight too!    I have heard of this before and now I believe it!
 
After setting up we went for a drive to the north of Mannum, following the Murray, just to see how people lived in these tiny communities.    We drove onto the free cable-driven ferry to the eastern side of the river and were surprised at the massive ploughed fields.   Some appeared to have already had a crop harvested so it was difficult to determine what was being grown.   Soon it became evident, with huge packing and storage sheds and packing cases. Oh and a give-away little sign!    Onions, onions and more onions   

An interesting drive, with little pockets of a couple of houses every now and then, then nothing.   What do these people do?   How do they survive?   Must be retired I reckon.   Great life.

We found a great lookout which shows the Murray off very effectively. What a view