From Broken Hill, we had a long drive along the Barrier Highway, across the desert to Port Pirie on the coast of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia. The emptiness of the land for hundreds of kilometres was astounding – at the same time that I feel sorry for the hotels and pubs that are going out of business (some had signs almost begging for customers) I wonder how they’ve managed to stay afloat for this long.
An interesting feature of the landscape as we approached the coast was a wind farm. At first the turbines look alien, as foreign and incongruous with nature as the metal invaders from War of the Worlds, but they soon became just another part of the environment. I wonder just how many we’ll need to provide a noticeable reduction in the pollution our coal-fired power stations are currently causing.
