Day 3 & 4 Whyalla and on to Streaky Bay

Restored bedford truck and Franklin Van

Flight

We spent a day exploring the surrounds of Whyalla, with Gaz and I heading out to the Whyalla museum. The most striking feature is the “ Whyalla” a world war II mine sweeper. The museum has the history and story of the Whyalla. 

The "Whyalla" 

The ship was built in around 1940 and commissioned in 1942 not bad when you consider the work team building it was about 25 people. It was built in Whyalla and was the forerunner to the construction of many ships at the Whyalla ship yards. Whyalla had 2 main industries – ship building and iron ore. There is only iron ore left which is a really shame because the skills these workers had was immense. After the war the “Whyalla” was sold to the Victorian Govt for maintenance work around Pt Phillip Bay and renamed the “RIP”. At the end of its service with Victoria it was sold back to the City of Whyalla and returned to Whyalla. A project then moved the ship from its moorings 2.5 kms inland to where it now sits at the museum. The museum houses many other interesting artefacts and the biggest working model rail system I have seen.

99, 100 that'll do for today

Looking back from the old gun placements across the ore factories

After lunch a trip to the lookouts overlooking the Whyalla township and bay area. Originally the lookout area was the gun placements to protect the harbour during WWII and the area has now been converted to a parkland and lookout. The lookouts provide a fantastic and very diverse view from the crystal clear oceans on one side the ore processing plants on the other.

Tuesday we left at reasonable time to head for Streaky Bay. It was to be a 360km trip over, mostly, country we have already seen and was pretty uneventful except for “Ms Sat Nav”. Gaz I both have then in our vehicles and I don’t know how you can put the same destination in and create such confusion. Each satnav had its own idea of the fastest route with mine wanting to go via Pt Lincoln when I wanted to go via Iron Knob. I have often thought it would be great to program in a voice that would say “bugger you, you haven’t listened to my last 3 commands I’m switching off now” and see what the reaction would be. We made Streaky Bay, in spite of the satnav, in reasonable time. 

Sun setting over Streaky Bay Caravan Park