Rail to Adelaide

When I woke this morning, we’d passed Port Augusta, and were in wheat country. Most of South Australia is desert, and when white men first came (in the late 1830s) it was during a set of good years. In the mid 1860s, they had terrible years - the Great Drought - and most people went bust. The surveyor general went through South Australia, and drew a line across the country where he had worked out the limits of crop production. It was named the Goyder’s line after him, and is still being used today. A lot of the country is irrigated - water from the Murray Darling river system is piped throughout the whole Yorke peninsula.

It was really hot when we arrived in Adelaide, so I walked to my accommodation and slunk indoors for the rest of the day.