Today’s drive I rather enjoyed. Rising early, though not amazingly so I left Woomera around 9:30 am ish.

Had breakfast at Spud’s Roadhouse as Woomera doesn’t have anything approaching a café. The food outlet in the Heritage Centre probably could have done me something, and I’m not sure about the restaurant in the Eldo Hotel.

For a roadhouse that’s 2 hours from a town it was a good proper sized breakfast. I ordered eggs, bacon and mushrooms. Got a plate piled with bacon, a quarter of the plate was mushrooms, 3 pieces of bread and 2 fried eggs. A proper sized breakfast that kept me not hungry till the afternoon.

I followed the road back down to Port Augusta and then headed south along the Princes Highway. Turning off for Crystal Brook and Burra.

Burra had been, early on in my planning the location where I was going to spend the night, but I’d decided to push on a little bit more and instead stay at Morgan on the banks of the Murray River. Something I later regretted that night.

This drive along the Goyder Highway and various other roads that lead me to Morgan was actually rather nice. Not flat either, different terrain changes, more farm land, it was all rather nice and different from the landscape that I’d previously passed through.

My route took me through farmland, past creeks and up hills. The landscape quickly changed from dry scrubland to somewhat dry farmland and then as I approached the Murray River green farm land. Trees neatly planted in rows crept up along the landscape.

Morgan was surprisingly hilly. It seemed a rather hilly place to settle a town. Odd that is was settled here being such a hilly town. But it did have good access to the river, which was probably its appeal when it was settled. Access to the river and the river in turn providing water for the surrounding land.

My accommodation for the night in Morgan was the Commercial Hotel, Morgan. It’s one of two pubs in Morgan. Both are on the same road, opposite one another. The other is the Terminal Hotel. It doesn’t do accommodation.

The Commercial Hotel is one of those great old hotels that has been added to throughout its life. So the accommodation that’s upstairs is all over the place. You go up the main flight, then it peels off in two directions for more rooms and then the bathrooms. The men’s bathroom had two showers and a toilet, with doors but within the main space. The women’s facilities were individual rooms 2 of them, which was interesting. From what I’ve gathered from the other places I’ve stayed at the men’s and women’s facilities are basically mirrors of one another.

History plaque for Commercial Hotel, Morgan

The proprietor gave me a tour of all the facilities and where the emergency exists were etc. This I’ve not had before, though he explained it’s ‘legal shit’. I do wonder if he’s been done for something and now does the show and tell to be careful, maybe I didn’t exude the tradie atmosphere that his other clients do and there was suspicious I was an OH&S dundridge.

My room at the Commercial Hotel was probably the worst of my whole trip. It was a room in what was probably part of the original hotel as it was above the pub and looked out onto the street beside the pub.

However it had been linked to the room beside it at some point in the past and the linking door remained. It also didn’t really close very well and had a door stop wedge to stop it moving around too much. Except the wedge wasn’t chunky enough to do its job.

The room had two beds, a double and single. The single was fine, unless you sat on it, then it sagged and bounced around.

No problem though I slept on the double bed.

Whilst waiting for 6 pm to roll around (so I might eat) I had been calculating my next stop which would have been Wycheproof in Victoria.

It’s notable for having a train line that runs down the main street. It does this because the council (when it had been originally built) didn’t want to pay extra money to buy land around the town to run the train line around the town. So it does down the main street to save money. This main street is also the Calder Highway.

Having arrived early into Morgan, as I’d mistimed / miscalculated how early I’d be rising and how much I’d been stopping at places along the way (very little) it meant I was arriving early.

The journey from Morgan to Wycheproof I’d calculated at being 5 hours 37 minutes or 6 hours if I had a look at the other side of the Murray River (necessitating two ferry crossings).

Instead, I’d decided to just push on and head home.

Making the trip from Morgan a little bit under 10 hours drive time.

Which meant getting a good night’s sleep.

I dined early, I was the only one in the dining room, a little odd. Though the clientele of the pub weren’t really the people I wanted to be sharing a dining room with.

The meal was pretty good $24 for a pub meal of steak.

Afterwards I showered and headed for bed.

Then, probably an hour maybe 2 hours later, as I was drifting off the shouting began.

This wasn’t exactly late at around 8:30 or maybe 9:30 pm.

The shouting was from bogans outside. I’m using the term, I feel accurately because, even without seeing them they were, the women especially sounded quite bogan. I presume that, based on their ‘discussions’ they wouldn’t mind me using this term to describe them. They were outside the pub. Outside my window in fact. Well actually they were outside and below my window.

At this point I thought ‘fine, they’ll drink and then leave’.

No.

That’s what I should have done.

I don’t actually recall how long they were drinking and shouting for. There was primarily one guy who liked to shout the most.

It think it was at least 10:30 pm maybe 11:30 pm when they left, tooting their horns all the way along the road.

And then driving back and doing the same thing again.

Then, finally probably nearer to midnight it went quiet.

It’d been sort of dozing though not really sleeping during all of this.

Eventually I got to sleep proper.

It’s all part of the experience is what I thought to myself.

I have bailed on a location before, though the last time was on my Brisbane trip heading away from Brisbane I’d decided to stay in Coopernook in New South Wales (it’s about 20 minutes from Taree). There I’d got to my room and found that it had a door that opened onto the balcony that wrapped around the pub.

It would have been lovely. In the summer.

I wasn’t there in the summer. I was there in July, a particularly cold July.

I thought maybe I could have put my bag against the door or something to ward off the cold. If there’d been a heater or something I might have stayed. After about 15 minutes though I’d decided no. I couldn’t stay there and got my money back from then and went down the road to Taree.

In Morgan I didn’t discover the shortcomings until later. Well alright initially I saw some shortcomings but they weren’t huge. I could work around the wedged door.

I suppose it wasn’t actually the pub’s problems it was their clientele.

But of all the places I stayed Morgan was the worst. Sometimes a small town is nice, quiet and homely. Other times it isn’t.

I think, were I for some reason to go through that neck of the woods again I would stay in Burra, which I did drive through. It was larger than Morgan though still a small town and seemed nice.