Steam Engines are Following Me

After a month of Goolwa's summer, our days punctuated by the distant whistle of the steam engine as the Cockle Train carried tourists back and forth between Goolwa and Vincent Harbor, we had to leave. Our home owner was safely back in the country so we said goodbye to the cats, the dog, the chooks, and the steam train.  We had half a day to kill before we could check into our next accommodation, and the day was forecast to be hot and sunny.  We ambled our way to Clayton Bay, on Lake Alexandrina and just across from the back end of Hindmarsh Island.  Last time I was at Clayton Bay there was not a soul to be seen, but now Summer had worked its magic:  the car park was stuffed full of 4wds and empty boat trailers, the water buzzed with skiers and fishers.  There was even an open pub/cafe! Progress happens, even in places like Clayton Bay. 

See?  Absolute throngs of people!

 

Not that it was progress enough to induce us to spend time in Clayton Bay, on we went to Milang for a picnic lunch instead.  Summer had worked its magic in there too: the car park was stuffed with cars, the caravan park was jammed with tents and caravans, fishers thronged on the jetty, and families splashed and paddled in the reedy shallows of Lake Alexandrina.

The pelicans had very sensibly retreated to the private jetties down near the fishing shacks.

Fishing crowds.

 

I went out on the jetty to take photos and lo and behold, there was the boarding-pass lady from the Friends of the Oscar W.  We recognised each other from our recent paddle steamer adventure and she became quite excited: "Have you come back for another ride?"

"Well no, isn't the Oscar W in Goolwa?  This is Milang."  Just in case she was geographically confused.

Turns out the Oscar W was at that very minute coming in to the jetty, having chuggalugged its way very slowly along the river from Goolwa, and would be spending two days at Milang to take people out for cruises on Lake Alexandrina.

Here comes the Oscar W.

I'm being stalked by a paddle steamer.

 

"But why?" I asked.  Milang was very nice and all, but I didn't think it had a population big enough (or motivated enough) to keep the Oscar W busy for two days, even if every single person decided to buy a ticket.  Ms Boarding Pass Lady was quite enthusiastic.  "It's the Yesterday's Power festival in town!  It used to be the Steam Festival but now they call it Yesterday's Power, and there's a tractor pull as well.  We run a bus from the Festival to the jetty and last year we filled the boat up on every cruise, because they're all steam nuts and the Oscar's a steam engine paddle boat!"

That explained the loudspeaker that echoed over town, providing snatches of information about engines and tractors and catching the bus down to the jetty for a ride on a genuine 115-year-old paddle steamer. And strawberries and ice cream behind the miniature steam engine tent: now that was something I could be interested in.

The Oscar has a very shallow draught, which was a good thing because the water was so shallow that adults were walking out around the ship, an activity that was energetically discouraged by the Duty Boat driver.

I'm the First Mate.  Do you want to come for a ride?  No, just on an out-and-back loop, not back to Goolwa.  Only crew members do that trip.  It's fun, too.

 

I watched the Oscar W dock and felt sorry for the man driving the Duty Boat which accompanied the Oscar W where ever it went.  He had just spent 5 hours sitting in his boat, plugging along at Oscar's less than stellar speed, roasting in the hot sun.  At least they could have put a canopy on his boat, and don't even get me started on the risks of reflected sunlight and the sea...  Mind you, the Duty Boat man seemed very happy with his lot and if he got bored he could always run some very fast rings around the Oscar W, or invite someone to jump in so he could rescue them.

Clusters of steam aficionados arrived and boarded the Oscar, dodging fishers and gawkers like me.  I watched the Oscar W (with a little bit of help from the Duty Boat) head out to sea lake and promised to send some photos to Ms Boarding Pass Lady.

 

We couldn't possibly leave town without checking out Yesterday's Power, given that our days had developed a certain steam-powered theme, so up to the sports oval we went.

Life went slower in the days of steam.

It was quite exciting.  Steam engines of all sizes and shapes thumped and rattled and chuffed and banged, pumping all manner of things with varying degrees of success.  

Steam engine owners doted on their machines, coddling them with oil and soothing them gently with greasy rags.  

 

A strong, hot wind howled and blew clouds of dust and a water truck busily sprinkled water, creating a unique combination of mud underfoot and clouds of dust rising from all the places that the water truck couldn't go.  In the middle of the oval the miniature steam engine people had (not on purpose, I hope) burnt black charred circles into the neatly mown bright green grass.

The loudspeaker commentary drew us toward the tractor pull and I have to confess that, not having attended a tractor pull event before, I was quite taken with the show. For those not in the know, a tractor pull involves hooking a tractor up to a sled on which a weight, by an ingenious arrangement of cables,  increases with the distance that the sled is pulled. The aim was for the tractor to pull 100% of the weight, and the whole thing was taken very seriously.  

 

Mind you, these were vintage tractors so there was the added thrill of the possibility of all kinds of engine blow outs or ups. We found seats in the shade and watched with bated breath. It was gripping stuff, aided by a commentator who knew more about tractors that I would have thought could possibly fit into the head of one man.  I gathered that the pursuit and care of vintage tractors was a vibrant and active, if largely unrecognised, sport in South Australia.

 

As riveting as tractor pulling was, time was ticking away and with 25 tractors yet to pull over another day of tractor pulling, we couldn't stay until the end.  With regret we left the tractors, swung past the strawberries and ice-cream, took a detour past the vintage cars, and ambled our way along Lake Road out of town and up into the hills to Mount Barker. We had a week or two until the next house sit, so a sojourn in the salubrious and pet-free environs of the Mount Barker Caravan Park was next on the list.

I'll leave you with a selection of the fishing shacks at Milang which, in the grand scheme of fishing shacks, were really quite well-appointed.