Day 7 (morning) Port Pirie & Port Germaine

On Sunday morning we headed back to check out some of the towns that the train had passed through on Friday, along Spencer Gulf. Port Pirie is a very industrial town, built around the port, but it has some beautiful old buildings in the central part of town - commerical buildings with verandahs and verandah posts still intact, and stone houses with old fashioned gardens.
This photo is the old part of the port. All the newer part is private property and out of limits to the public.

Then we continued north along Spencer Gulf, with the southern end of the Flinders' Ranges in the distance.

Next stop was Port Germaine. We were intrigued by the commentary on the train that had explained that Port Germaine has the longest wooden pier in the southern hemisphere. It had been built to support the farmers and graziers moving onto the land to the north of Spencer Gulf during the end of the 19th century. For the first few years they had good returns and needed a faster way to get produce and animals to market than taking them all the way to Adelaide by road.
Unfortunately the boom wasn't sustainable. The soil was poor and once the initial nutrients were used there was nothing to replenish the soil. Plus the few good years were followed by drought - the more normal state for this part of the country.

But the pier survived. You can see why it had to be so long - Spencer Gulf is very shallow at this point, and when the tide is out it is out a very, very long way.

Like so much of this part of the country, there are beautiful old buildings made of local stone. This one is the pub in St. Germaine, right opposite the start of the pier.