Laura

Our route towards Adelaide took us further around the Eyre Peninsula. After a few nights in Whyalla we decided to take a break from the wild and woolly coastal weather and headed inland to the quaint and prettily-named town of Laura. This is Quinkan Country.

After so many months spent watching the sun setting over the Indian Ocean with red dirt beneath our feet (and in all our crevices), driving through rolling hills of wheat and barley with the purplish hue of the Flinders Ranges in the distance brought home the realisation that we'd left Western Australia behind. And we were a bit sad about that. Until the caretaker of Laura's caravan park delivered a plate of freshly baked scones and we soon forgot all about WA.

Laura claims CJ Dennis among its most famous residents. I have to admit that I've never been terribly interested in poetry (if you listen carefully you'll hear the sound of my father spinning in his grave) but somewhere deep inside my tiny head I was able to recall that Clarence Michael James Stanislau Dennis wrote the Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. Just don't ask me to recite any of it.

Chuffed to discover that some snippets of my primary school education were still lodged somewhere inside my brain, I Googled the Sentimental Bloke and, well, let's just say it's the type of poetry best absorbed if heard performed by someone like Jack Thompson. Reading it more than a century after it was written is quite a challenge.

But that aside, there's a nice statue of CJ Dennis in Laura's main street and we enjoyed learning a little more about the man.

We spent a day driving around and stopping at some of the other towns in the area including Orroroo (try saying that theee times quickly after a glass of wine); and Jamestown, which was the birthplace of Reginald Murray "RM" Williams.

It's a pretty part of South Australia and we'll definitely be back for a longer visit someday. We hope you enjoy the photos, including a couple of Whyalla and Port Germain where we stopped for a pie.

We're now back a Christies Beach where the fun continues. But that's a story for another day.