Visiting Old Tailem Town

The last post about any holiday is always the hardest for me. I think that's why it's taken me so long to write about Old Tailem' Town, a pioneer village in South Australia's eastern fringe. Tailem was the last stop on our month-long journey that spanned over 5000km.

Old Tailem Town is a reproduction village made up of original historic buildings that have been shifted to the site, as well as some newer buildings made to look as they would have in Australia's 1860s to 1960s. We went for the inspiration and eye candy and got more than we bargained for.

I was excited about the crumpled linoleum, kitchenware and train cars. Craig was excited about the faux grocery store stocked with old tins of some of Australia's most iconic brands. Authentic or not, Tailem was a nice surprise and finally gave us a proper ghost town we'd been craving on our journey.

Even better as we had the whole town to ourselves.

Old Tailem Town was an unplanned stop for us. We drove past and were lured by the decommissioned pickup trucks sitting out front. Stepping inside the town, we were greeted with dust-covered carts settled among sprawling cacti. Corrugated buildings lined unpaved streets.

With at least fifty shops and nearly as many houses, Old Tailem Town paints a good picture of what life was like in early European-settled Australia. Visit the dentist, stop in the milliner's shop, peer at the telegraph station, glimpse at the past.

It's a dusty place though, so don't wear your finest. We spent a couple of hours among the houses and shops and another fifteen minutes or so in the barbwire museum. Who knew there were thousands of kinds of barbwire?

After getting our fill and filling our camera, we crawled back into our Ford Ranger. We were heading home...

This concludes our month-long journey across the Nullarbor - a journey we'd happily make again.