Burra to Hawker

Friday 20 April Burra to Hawker

We pulled out of Burra around 10ish as we had a fairly short journey today to Hawker. Stopped in Peterborough for fuel and decided to have a look through the visitor’s centre as it was in a first class sleeping carriage of an old train. The lady there told us there was a really good steam train museum just down the road, so of course we had to stop in for a look see. We spent the next hour and a half on a tour of the old railway works yard where there were the three different rail gauges that were in use by three different states at the one time. Seems pretty strange that the governments couldn’t agree on just one national gauge but I guess that’s governments for you.

There was a very extensive variety of locomotives and various carriages including remote health carriages where nurses used to travel to different locations for a week or so to tend to the children of the area, workers accommodation carriages, breakdown carriages and an amazing restored first class club car, complete with lead light windows, leather lounges and a tinkling upright piano.

They had a roundhouse full of trains straight out of Thomas the Tank Engine. For a minute we thought we were in Tidmouth Sheds. They even had a steam tram called Toby!

As we continued towards Hawker, the southern end of the Flinders ranges started to come into view so we are looking forward to exploring the area in the next few days.