Another day and another fire in a Regional Area – this time in Glossop.

The pager had gone off at 5:45 am notifying of a Factory fire that had gone 4th Alarm in a Country Fire Service area adjacent to our Berri Station.

When the pager went off again at 7:15 am indicating for me to respond as Safety Officer, I thought it may have been in error – after all it is a 2.5 hour drive and I am on my day off (still on call though).

It turned out that we had a large number of MFS resources on scene from Berri, Renmark and Loxton and were responding some aerial assistance from Adelaide.

It was an uneventful drive arriving around 10:00 am.

After checking in with the CFS Incident Controller, time to meet with our crews and see that all was well.

The damage to the factory which had 3 business running from it was extensive although there was some good saves at the north western corner. The overall damage bill ended up at around $2 million.

I ended up spending the day here in the 40 degree heat dealing with 3 acetylene cylinders that had been heated and were venting. We had cooling streams running all day and also build a sandbag wall around them utilising the SES, in case the cylinders decided to explode.

At the end of a long day, I met up with my sister and her family for tea at Berri before hitting the hay in the Berri Resort Hotel.

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The wind from last night had long gone, as had the clouds with the sun shining but it was not that warm. There were stories of the Road between Marree and Lyndhurst had been cut by flood waters so we decided to take the alternative route down the Borefield Road to Olympic Dam, Roxby Downs and Andamooka.

A brief stop at Curdimurka. It is hard to imagine that this is the site of the biennial Curdimurka Ball as it was very desolate today.

Once on the Borefield Road, the going was good getting up to 100 kph in places. Also the amount of wildflowers following the recent rains was amazing including blankets of Sturt Desert Pea.

Into Roxby Downs for some fuel and Subway then off to Andamooka. This was not what I had expected with bitumen roads and phone coverage. I had always thought that Andamooka was like the wild west. Visited the Bottle House, the Long Bus then it was onward to Woomera to have a look at the big boys toys at the Missile Park.

After stopping for a stubby cooler at Spuds Roadhouse in Pimba, we ventured down to the flats of Island Lagoon. This was a fun drive in and with some spectacular country. You could almost be on another planet. In fact this area has been used as a movie set and unfortunately they left a lot of the movie set behind when they finished filming. This area was used for filming Zone 39 on the edge of the Woomera Prohibited Area.

The rest of the trip to camp was uneventful with a fuel and food stop at Port Augusta before heading down the road to Mambray Creek for the night.

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Welcome to Scott-Thompson.info

This blog will allow you to follow our travels around Australia and around the world.

Our first entries will be for our upcoming trip to California for the July school holidays. Enjoy.