you've all had a day to rest, shall we continue our walk?

on Tuesday, I left you as we (the collective, royal, "we") were leaving the beach and heading towards Fisherman's Jetty.

Before I went I took photos of the skatepark.....that's new to me...

see that bare ground behind it? There's some sort of construction going on there....perhaps the skatepark isn't completed yet.

I took a couple more photos of the causeway, aka John Pirie Bridge, one of each end.....

the far end,

and the near end. I'm not sure what the metal work is behind it, it belongs to the silos.
In between the causeway and the silos is Fisherman's Jetty and to get there, I had to pass this....

looks like an old boat launcher to me. It's entirely enclosed in a wire fence with barbed wire topping.

So I walked around it and on towards Fisherman's Jetty. In my memory, fishies wharf was rough and rustic, one long jetty with many small walkways leading off the side with two or three small boats tied to each walkway, each boat having its own gangplank. It was a very busy area, many of the townspeople going out and catching their own dinners, the water was often murky and on the side away from the silos was a rickety set of steps leading down to some rocks where my brother would fish. That has gone now and the whole area has been cleaned up all spiffy-like.

just look at that clean, blue water!

this is the cleaned up version of the jetty. At the far end you can see a few of the old walkways still leading off the main jetty, which itself is very narrow and now locked so the public can't access it. Between those boats is just water, no more of those rickety walkways we used to walk along and talk to the fishermen.
Off to the left is the Port Pirie Yacht Club, I didn't photograph that, there weren't any sailing boats out, just a locked building. I remember from high school, the kids who belonged to the yacht club would have their little sail boats out on the water most weekends and they were quite snobbish sometimes.

Beyond the yacht club is where the wharf began, huge ships would tie up there, sometimes only one, but more often two or three would be lined up along the length of it. When I played around the wharf with my brother, we'd make friends with sailors from the ships and sometimes get invited on board to look around and of course we'd go. We never sensed any danger, and I distinctly remember at least twice being on deck so very high above the water looking down to where the anchor had been dropped. We'd have a quick look around, then be off back to the fishies jetty or all the way back to the beach.

this is one of the larger fishing boats tied up where a huge ship once tied up. From here all the way around to the Smelters there were big ships with unpronouncable names from places we'd look up in the atlas at the library.
Just back off this area are the silos. I first saw them from Wandearah Road while walking towards the overpass....

that's them in the distance, bright white against bright blue.
There are four sets of silos now, the first set is grey in colour and was built while my brother and I were young and reckless enough to play around the construction area, climbing up and down and around all sorts of places we shouldn't have been.
I'm sure watching these silos going up influenced my brother quite a bit as he now works in the concrete construction industry building similar things all over the country.

the brownish grey silos on the end are the first ones to have been built, with the darker grey ones behind coming later. The white sets, photos below, are newer and larger. I can't say for sure what those metal things are, I think maybe some kind of grain moving apparatus, to feed grain between the silos and the trucks.

It was getting quite hot by now and I was getting hungry, so I headed for the footpath to get past the silos.....
here's a long shot.....

looking up.....

and there is the sun.

One more photo....

Just before I passed the silos, I spotted this.....

funny looking thing, so I zoomed in on the front end to see what it said on there....

it's a grain cleaner! How about that!

I bet it doesn't use water and detergent, ha ha.

I found my way to the nearest Subway sandwich shop and bought lunch, took it back to the motel room  to eat, then had a nap. I regret not taking photos of the motel rooms from the outside, the entrance I showed you a couple of posts ago, (I think, did I?) doesn't look overly impressive, but the rooms have been made to look nice with a small verandah along and brick pillars with pot plants and chairs.

to be continued.....











Comments

  1. Enjoying the tour! Thank you and happy holidays!!

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  2. Well that's the first grain cleaner I've ever seen.
    Merle........

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  3. Glad they are keeping their grain all 'spiffy like' as well. Great shots of the silos...especially looking up. You make a great tour guide.

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  4. Love the photos and your descriptions, River.
    I remember similar jetties in WA long ago. When I was a child, visiting my uncle's old boat, which had wonky plank walkways, that led to each boat.
    SA has vast grain fields that seem to stretch forever.
    I remember the big silos in Poochera, and beautiful Streaky Bay.
    Hope you had a lovely day yesterday :)

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  5. You had such a wonderful childhood roaming free with your brother and it's great your tour brought back so many precious memories.
    I agree you would make a great tour operator as I feel I am right there in Port Pirie with you.
    The 'grain cleaner had me intrigued. Wonder what it does exactly?
    Looking forward to the next episode in the grand tour. Thanks again for sharing.

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  6. You are right, that water does look so blue! Isn't it amazing how it can change color though? What memories of the times getting to explore those ship! I hope you had a nice day!

    betty

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  7. Wow. Knackered here (LL today) so I was very, very glad that you were the one doing the walking. Thank you so much for the tour. Loved the water, and the sailing ships...

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  8. fishducky; I'm glad you're enjoying a little walk around Australia. Well, a tiny part of it anyway.

    Merlesworld; me too, I didn't know they had such things.

    Delores; can you believe I once applied for a job in a tourist office and they didn't want me? Fools.

    Vicki; those wonky plank walkways were the best part! Did you ever try to run along one without falling in? We do have grain that seems to stretch to the horizon.

    Mimsie; I had the free-est childhood of anyone I know, my only rules were be home when the sun went down and go to school. My brother had one extra rule, don't do anything that will have the Police knocking on our door. He was a bit wilder than me.

    betty; I suppose the water would look grey if the sky was cloudy, but that doesn't happen often up there. Maybe a week or three in the winter.

    Elephant's Child; LL? That would wear me out so completely, I couldn't handle it at all. I'm glad there are people like you who do though, so many people need the help you give. Have a cuppa.

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  9. Well you've certainly made Port pirie seem much more interesting that I would have guessed it to be. The tourist bureau should pay you for the free, positive publicity.

    I love seeing the big grain silos. We had family in Victoria, so on long road trips to see them, we'd see these silos along the road through the south east of the state. I'd never thought of them being at Pt Prie as well.

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  10. A port's a port the world around, and the business of the world runs through its ports. Impressive grain silos. My father was radio operator on ore boats in the Great Lakes and told us of a grain silo explosion in Chicago. It was awful. More safety in place these days.

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  11. Marie; I'm pretty sure the tourist bureau welcomes FREE publicity. Apart from the Nyrstar smelter works and the silos, I don't think there's all that much to do in Port Pirie. I think its proximity to the popular Flinders Ranges is its best point. but I'm not sure you can get there from PP unless you have a car. PP has no passenger train service and I'm fairly sure buses (and trains?) to the Flinders Ranges go directly from Adelaide.

    Joanne; the port up there doesn't seem to do as much business as it used to, certainly there were no huge international ships at the wharf. Passenger liners never made it that far up the gulf anyway, but cargo ships were great to watch when I was a kid. Trying to work out where they'd come from by the name alone, listening to the different languages of the sailors, it was all so interesting for a ten year old.

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