Uluru

So, time for part 2. Where were we?

Ah yes, Coober Pedy. We left the town underground and set off for what could be the final tourist destination of our trip in Oz - Ayers Rock, or Uluru to give it it's proper Aboriginal name.

From Coober Pedy it was a 5 hour drive north along the usual outback roads. We stopped at a roadhouse at Erldunda for the night, and awoke early to find frost on the tent and car, before setting off for the big red rock.

On the 2 hour drive from the main highway to Uluru the scenery continues to be bland and repetitive, until in the distance you see this big rock sticking up out of the relatively flat land. At this point, many people say 'ooooooh, Uluru' and start taking photos, but we've been told about this and knew that it's actually Mt. McConnell, a deceptive fake about an hour away from the famous one.

Whether it's simply due to it's fame or there really is something special about it, it's hard not to be impressed when you do see Uluru popping up over the horizon. It sits in the middle of the outback like it just fell out of the sky, and it is huge.

We set up camp in the Ayers Rock resort and the next day did the walk around the base of Uluru which is about 6 miles all the way round. Seeing the rock up close you start to understand why it is so famous, because it is not just one huge lump of rock sitting there like we expected. It's full of gorges, caves and all sorts of bits and bobs poking out. When it rains (which is pretty rare), there are hundreds of waterfalls and you can see where they would flow all around it.

We didn't do the climb. The local aboriginal people that 'own' the rock ask you not to but a lot of people still do. The climb was closed while we were there due to strong winds, but you can see why dozens of people have died attempting it because it's bloody steep and there's not a lot to hang on to.

We stuck around for the famous sunset that evening but were disappointed due to the cloud, and so retired for the evening to get ready for our joint birthday meal. We went for a buffet at one of the resorts restaurants and enjoyed the usual roast meats, plus a bit of kangaroo and even a crocodile stir-fry.

Tasted like chicken.

The next day was the less famous brother of Uluru, Kata Tjuta or The Olgas. We've heard several people say they were more impressed by this other rock formation just half an hour away from Uluru and it's easy to see why. The Olgas is like a set of dome-shaped red rocks and although you can see them on the horizon for miles, it's only when you get there that you realise how massive they are.

We did a long walk called the Valley of the Winds which was beautiful, and then headed back to the car park to find a couple of Dingoes wandering round. Then we nipped down to Uluru to try the sunset again. More bloody cloud.

The third tourist attraction in this area is Kings Canyon, 3 hours north of Uluru. We arrived there to be given what was probably the worst pitch we've ever had to put our tent up. It was about 2 metres from the toilets and the washing line on a scruffy bit of grass where it seems the cleaners empty their buckets onto. Lovely.

Not only that, it also had the honour of being the most expensive site too!

So we were keen to get out of the site and headed off to the canyon. We did the short walk inside the canyon and were a little disappointed. We'd heard good things about it and it didn't really live up to our expectations.

The following day, however, we did a long walk around the top of the canyon and that was excellent.

We left Kings Canyon happy with our few days being tourists again. After enjoying the Oodnadatta track so much we decided to take a shortcut down a rough gravel road to Alice Springs. This extremely bumpy track trimmed a couple of hours off a 5 hour trip, and took us through Aboriginal land so we had to get a permit for that. It was far more interesting than the boring tarmac road though.

We've had a couple of lazy days in The Alice, but yesterday went on the job hunt. We managed to find something pretty quickly a couple of hours north of here and we leave tomorrow. As usual it's pretty isolated so we don't know what sort of contact we'll have for the next few weeks.

That means we'll be spending our next few weeks pruning grape vines. Exciting eh!

More piccies to bring us up to date:

You may have seen this before:



The climb - you can see about half of it here:


Frost at Erldunda (yes it gets bloody cold here):


Kev at Kings Canyon:


Charlotte having lunch at Kings Canyon:


Charlotte on the Valley of the Winds walk through the Olgas / Kata Tjuta:


Kev at The Olgas / Kata Tjuta:

Where we are now...

A Town Called Alice

Hello.

OK, take a deep breath...

Since our last proper update, we began with a nice week in Adelaide staying with Kev's cousin Mick, where we enjoyed the comfort of having a real bed, TV, bricks and heating. While we were there we managed to get some suspension work done on the car which turned out to be a bit more serious than we'd realised, but wasn't too much of a hit on the wallet thankfully.

When all was sorted, we left to head for the Barossa Wine Valley, where a lot of Aussie wines originate. Probably the most famous would be Jacob's Creek, and so we dropped in there to have a look round their visitor centre.

We decided that we didn't need to spend too long in the wine region since we had a nice time over in New South Wales doing the same thing, so continued north and stopped in a small town called Clare, in another wine region called the Clare Valley.

The next day, we made preparations for our adventure into the bush by stocking up on food and water at Port Augusta, since that was the last big town we'd be seeing for a while. That done, we arrived in a fairly remote town called Hawker which was perfectly located for us to spend a day exploring the Flinders Ranges, a mountain range in the northern part of South Australia.

We set off expecting something like The Grampians and the backdrop was equally impressive, but it was quite different somehow. We followed a rocky track through some gorges, splashing through some creek crossings and avoiding the Emus. It was a great day and good fun driving along the rough roads.

The next day it was a few hours north to the start of the Oodnadatta track at a town called Marree. The Oodnadatta track is a road that follows the original railway link between the south and the centre of this part of Australia. Considering the fact that most of that terrain is desert, it was an amazing achievement. However, not long after the second world war the decision was made to close this line and build a new one a hundred miles further west, and so the original line and all the towns along it were left to rot.

Marree was once one of the bigger towns on the route and so has survived so far. After spending an evening chatting to some locals around the campfire, they didn't seem too optimistic about it's future either.

The track itself is about 350 miles long, and it is often closed after heavy rain because it becomes impassable, even for 4WDs. Luckily for us, the rain had stayed away and it was to our unuttered relief that as we hit the dirt road, it was in pretty good condition.

This route was chosen because it follows a series of areas where water is abundant. The first one we discovered was Mound Springs, where a pool of water sits above a small hill, and bubbles away as the water gets drawn from the Artesian basin water table that much of central Australia sits above.

Further along, we found an old ruin that is often used by campers as a refuge from the icy desert winds. It was an old siding but is still in pretty good nick, so people just chuck their bedding on the floor and make the best of it. The fireplaces are intact and obviously well used today. In one room, somebody's even written some house rules!

Later on the first day we arrived at our first stop along the track, William Creek. Consisting of a pub, a cafe and a campsite, this is one of Australias smallest towns, population: 12.

The pub is a bit of an oddity. The walls are absolutely covered with mementos from people who have ventured this far into the bush. There is everything from business cards to underpants. Somebody even sent them an X-Ray of their broken shoulder, suffered while driving on the track a few weeks ago, so that's on the wall. We had a quick beer there and retired before the cold night set in. The temperature drops down to near zero in the outback at this time of year, and if you're not wrapped up in bed it can get pretty bloody cold in a tent.

We got up with the sun the next morning, packed up and hit the road again. This part of the track still followed the old railway, and there are all sorts of messages to be seen that have been written using the old wooden sleepers. We stopped at a place called Coward Springs which was where the old railway workers had set up a small thermal pool by bringing the water up from the water table. A couple of the buildings there are still fairly intact, much moreso than our next stop on the trip at a place called Peakes Ruins.

Peakes Ruins was an overland telegraph repeater station, and is probably the biggest collection of buildings on the track, although they're half collapsed. To get there required tackling a 10 mile 4WD track, and when you haven't seen another car for several hours, it can get a little unnerving. When we got to the other end, we were happy to see a couple of people camping out there though so we felt a bit more comfortable. After lunch, we bounced our way back to the main track and eventually arrived in Oodnadatta.

There's nothing for more than a hundred miles in any direction on the track so Oodnadatta feels like a thriving city when you arrive. Well, no that's not true actually, it just feels like a town that has more than 2 buildings. The whole town seems to be built out of corrugated steel, or whatever else they could get their hands on when they were building it. It's a bit like the town built the A-Team built.

We set up, got a fire going and spent a nice evening staring at the flames with a beer, admiring the enormity of an outback night sky.

From this point we decided to change our route. A few people had advised us that the rest of the Oodnadatta track was fairly featureless since it strays from the old rail line. There was another road down to the unusual town of Coober Pedy but we'd been told it was a really rough track.

Well sod it, we went anyway.

And good job we did. The road was fine, nothing our big old 4WD couldn't handle (especially after a few tips from the locals), and we shifted along at a good pace until we arrived at a place called the Painted Desert, which is odd because it's actually a load of rocks. The rocks are multi-coloured and were quite amazing to see, although sunrise/sunset is more spectacular apparently.

Another few hours down the road we found ourselves in the Moon Plains. From horizon to horizon there is absolutely nothing but small black rocks sitting on dark sand. It's an incredible place. Not surprising that a few big films have been set there, Mad Max being one and more recently Pitch Black and The Red Planet.

We drove through this for hours before finally arriving at Coober Pedy. Coober Pedy is fairly unremarkable at first; it seems like a hot, dusty and quite unorganised outback town. What you can't see is that half of the 3,500 people who live here live underground.

This area is where the majority of the world's precious opals come from and so it's full of holes where prospectors and companies have been searching for them. When soldiers came here after the first world war, they found it was bloody hot, easily getting to 50c in the summer days. So, they had the cunning idea of living in foxholes, just like in the trenches, and made their homes a few metres down.

So, you can walk around the town and not see much, but go through the doors and there are hotels, pubs and shops buried deep in the earth. There's even a campsite!

Ironically for a town that has had many problems with water supply in the past, we nearly lost our tent to a flood that night. A water mains burst in the middle of the night just a couple of metres from where our tent was pitched. The water started pouring into around the tent and we started putting into place our emergency evacuation procedures. Procedures that were made up on the spot.

We got lucky though, the pipe split further towards the road and the water started draining away, so all we suffered was a night of flashing lights, JCBs and council blokes shouting at each other.

That was about a week ago but we'll have to leave it there for now (this is one bloody big blog entry already). We'll add the next installment when we get chance...


You might be drinking these grapes soon:


The Flinders Ranges from afar:


Creek crossing in Brachina Gorge, Flinders Ranges (South Australia):



The museum at William Creek. Just to illustrate the remoteness of this place, nearby Woomera used to be a missile testing area:


The Peake ruins:


The back of the Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta:


Beresford ruins, an old siding now makeshift campsite:


The sign says it all on the Moon Plains, between Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy:


Kev feels the painted desert needed a bit more yellow:


The track to Peakes ruins:


For 4 days, this was our view:


Charlotte outside a motel in Coober Pedy (the rooms are about 6 metres below our feet):


A film prop (Pitch Black?) just sitting in a car park in Coober Pedy:


The Breakaways, just outside Coober Pedy:

Back from the Bush

Bugger. I just spent the last 20 minutes writing a hilarious and thrilling account of our last couple of weeks, and then unfortunately managed to lose the whole lot in one keystroke.

In a nutshell, we had a week in Adelaide and got the car sorted, went up to the Flinders Ranges, did the Oodnadatta track and we're now in Coober Pedy, where half the population lives underground.

We're both very well and have had a great time driving through the outback. We'll be heading north soon to see Ayers Rock / Uluru, and Alice Springs.

We'll do a full blog update next time we get on the net but we're not sure when that will be. Ta ta!

The story so far

Hello. We're now in Adelaide, enjoying the hospitality of Kev's cousin Mick. We'll be stopping here for a couple of days while we get the car ready for it's last big journey for us.

Here's the latest map showing where we've been so far...