30.3.11 – Goodbye, campavan! (Kapunga and Adelaide, South Australia)

30.3.11 – Goodbye, campavan!  (Kapunga and Adelaide, South Australia)



Copper mines at Kapunga



I’m sitting in Levi Campsite in Adelaide, under the gum trees, listening to the parrots fluttering and squawking above me, much as we did at our first camp in Yass, three and a half weeks ago.  


We came down via Kapunga, where a hundred and fifty years ago, thousands of Cornish miners came to bring the bright green copper ore  to the surface.  The best hard rock miners in the world, they saved South Australia from bankruptcy, but all that is left now are mounds of yellow and green gravel, a pool of brilliant turquoise water, and a tall, red brick chimney, lonely in the baking sun.  And of course a host of Cornish place names and traditions.  As we left, a huge statue – Map Kernow (meaning son of Cornwall) – stood 24 feet high, his pick in one hand, his hammer in the other, on his head his bowler hat (for that is what they wore) with its candle glued on at the front with a lump of clay, his only light in the pitch black depths of the mine.  

Map Kernow



We stopped at Two Wells, where the Aboriginals knew where water was to be had in this arid land, and the drovers learned from them where to stop and water their beasts on their long treks south, then at St. Kilda, that shared the sea but not much else with its storm-swept island namesake off Scotland’s Atlantic coast.

And so we came to Adelaide, to pack up our little home and tomorrow return it to its owners.  Camping has turned out to be a terrific choice.  Complete freedom to go where and when we wished – to stop at places that caught our imagination, to hurry past others less fascinating than the brochures suggested; to wake up beside sparkling rivers, or gleaming seas; to hear the cackle of parrots or the silence of the outback; to sleep to the slow rhythm of the ocean or the insistent chirrup of the crickets; to drive the long empty roads of the outback or the broad, tree-lined avenues of the cities; to see the sun gleam through the curtains, or hear the rain’s percussion on the roof; to chat to other campers, learning about their lives and adventures, or to sit quiet reading as the sky turned from peach to lilac and finally exploded in a myriad of brilliant stars, scattered over the velvet blackness.  But most of all, it gave us the chance to retrace Bill’s boyhood footsteps, through Whyalla, Wilpena Pound and now at last here to Levi Park.  Added as it has been to the earlier delight of visiting family and friends, this last three weeks has been a magical time for these two ‘Grey Nomads’.

A happy grey nomad