Day 21 - Wednesday 14/8/24, Peterborough

Set off for Peterborough today - only 290 km today, travelling through country side that soon changed from tall river trees, vineyards and orchards to low lying scrub, just like being back on the Nullarbor. You could see the occasional sheep grazing on I'm not sure what, but they didn't look starving. Lots of dead kangaroos and a couple of wombats on the roadside. We pasted through some very quaint old fashion country towns with lots of wrought iron on the buildings. We past a highway sign called "Worlds end Highway" going to Robertstown, which we decided not to take! and continued onto Peterborough. South Australia does RV parks really well, and although you need to be self-sufficient - which we are, we decided to save a few dollars and camp for free. The town is a lot bigger than I imagined, settled in the 1870's to service agriculture & pastoral industries. Originally named Petersburg after a Prussian born landowner Peter Doecke who sold his land to create the township. Due to WW1 and the German involvement the towns name and many streets were anglicised and changed. He was upset as he was Prussian, a country that did not exist anymore. The town was the railway intersection of east and west linking Port Pirie with Broken Hill, and north to south linking Adelaide with Alice Springs, being a stop for the Indian Pacific. As an agriculture region the train transported wheat and wool to the southern ports until bulk handling came in during the 1960's. In the main street of about 1 km there are 3 pubs to choose from. Walking along the street paths the curbs are about a foot high, I wonder how many have left the pub and fallen down the road side gutter?

Day 22 - Thursday 15/8/24 - Peterborough and about

After visiting the information centre, we decided to try their recommended "Peterborough Northern Areas Scenic drive". You get a mud map and a detailed kilometre by kilometre written dialogue to follow points of interest along the way. By the time we were 3 km into the drive our speedo was out by 1 km 😊. At 11.5 km the info directed you to turn left onto a dirt road!! Missed that one. So, we used google maps to get us to the next town - the ghost town of Dawson.

Dawson was a bustling little town in 1891 when it was surveyed and was originally called Coglin. Wheat farming was the intention in the area, having good & bad years, but proved unsuccessful in the long term due to the lack of rainfall. The train line also bypassed to Peterborough. A post office was opened in 1881, and the town renamed Dawson in 1882. In 1894 there was news of gold being found which brought new life to the town. By 1949 Dawson was going into decline and unsold allotments were purchased by the government, with the town officially abolished in 1960. All that remains now is a pub ruin that existed from 1883 to 1961, a poor methodist church at the road side and the more wealthier looking catholic church up on the hill behind. In 1885 there was a school with 55 students enrolled, it closed in 1964, and the post office shut in 1971.

After leaving Dawson we managed to get back on the original trail that meandered on dirt roads through farm land. We came across a couple of alpacas grazing, it looked like a scene out of South America with the broken down building in the back ground.

Some interesting information on why there are so many ruins in the area. The land was originally surveyed into units of about 100 mile square, then subdivided into blocks of 80 acres, which were then sold for cash at auctions. The legal minimum price was £1.00/acre, but the auctions often ran the prices up far more than what the average farmer could afford. However, there was increasing demand for more land to be available so the "Strangways Land act" was introduced. A purchase of up to 640 acres was allowed with 20% payment at auction and the full amount paid in 4 years. The buyer was legally bound to occupy the land within 6 months of purchase and had to reside there until the purchase finalised. The new farmers soon discovered after a couple of good seasons, they were followed be more droughts and poor seasons that lead to hardship as the land blocks were too small to make a living, sending, the land was also difficult to clear to cultivate, so families were forced to leave the area for work and left the farms and buildings to fall into ruin. As equipment improved, one being the stump jump plough, this enabled neighbours who could afford it to purchase & clear the land they needed to make a living, and they have become the larger pastoralists in the regions.

The last fun place to come across was magnetic hill, which has a claim of pulling your car back up the hill! It actually happens, your turn your car engine off, place it in neutral and you car rolls backwards up hill - I have a video to prove it 😊, but! Is it an optical illusion. Legends says it was discovered by a local in 1930, when he was driving his first car along the road, he got a flat tyre. Doing the right thing by putting a stone at the front wheel before jacking it up, the car began to roll back up the hill!.

The last 30km of the route, and sensing Rob was a little fed up with driving on dirt roads, we meandered through hills and over dry creek beds back to Peterborough. It was certainly and interesting way to see the country side.