Oodnadatta Track

26/9/2018 Wednesday R & R woke at 6:30am to a still morning.  By 8:15am, they were packed down and headed 5kms south on Stuart Hwy before turning east 11kms on the unsealed Ernest Giles Road alongside the Bacon Range and then another 4kms to the Henbury Meteorite Crater Conservation Park.  The reserve contained twelve craters which were formed when a meteor hit the earth’s surface 4,700 years ago.  The park was really small at only about 2kms square.  R & R walked round for more than half an hour and found it a really great example of a meteorite crater and very interesting.  By 9:40am, R & R were back on the Stuart Highway heading south with the intention sleeping the night at the Marla caravan park about 350kms away.  For the day’s journey the road was flat to undulating with the level above sea about 450m and a low point of 400m at Erlunda, lower at Wantapella Swamp (about 40kms north of Marla) at 375m, even lower closer to Marla at 325m.  RA knew it would be a long day’s drive and put a new audio book “One Step Behind” by Henning Mankell on to play.  Chapter One went well but then the battery went flat so RA had to wait for another day as the spare batteries were in the camper.  The country side switched between better trees and shrubs and coverage of grasses, and flora of lesser quality but always on red soil.  Red hills and ridges, the tallest of which was Mt Cavanagh at 566m, with rock and more or less vegetation were closer to, and then further away from, the road most of the day.  Closer to Erlunda there were the soft red sand dunes with the desert oaks growing on them and again R & R saw wattle in bloom, later a second, brighter yellow wattle as well.  There were many grids on the road as land use switched between different cattle stations and indigenous land.  There was almost no road kill other than two dead eagles.  R & R stopped at Erlunda, Kulgera and the Border for breaks and photo opportunities as well as at a truck bay a little south of the border where they had late lunch about 1:15pm.  Throughout the day, R & R saw several interesting things: There were two tractors mowing the road verge which seemed to be doing a great job besides raising dust, one man was minding a flock of young Hereford cattle on the long paddock stretching about two kilometres, Erlunda had an emu enclosure, a picnic area which had beautiful murals painted by Pam Armstrong and a monument claiming to be the dead centre of Australia, Alex Warne truck parking bay was named, like many others in the NT, after someone related to the trucking industry, Army trucks were on the move again with about five vehicles at a time spaced about 20 minutes intervals, totalling about 50, the Central Australian Railway and its service track ran under the road and then alongside it for a while, one police car, and, just north of Marla, there were orange and while hills to the east unlike the red hills or sand dunes R & R had seen so many of, in the last few days.  It was 3:20pm when RL pulled into Marla Travellers Rest.  First, they refuelled before paying for and selecting an unpowered camp site for the night.  They were a little disappointed that there was no water available, but hardly surprised.  They chatted a while to some neighbouring campers before setting up the camper but by 4:30 they were seated with a cup of coffee, after which they had a shower.  R & R read through a post draft and were just about to prepare dinner when their daughter S, rang.  As they had not spoken for a few days, R & R prepared dinner while chatting and continued while eating dinner.  After dinner RL rang his brother, S, before reading and RA wrote her diary.  RL was looking forward to driving the Oodnadatta Track … and RA was hoping he would not be disappointed. 

27/9/2018 Thursday R & R woke at 6:30am to 12*C and a gentle breeze of about 6km/hr.  It promised to be another warm day.  At 7:50am, The Hum zeroed his speedo as he left the Marla roadhouse, let down the pressure in all the tyres and engaged 4WD to take on the unsealed Oodnadatta Track bound for Oodnadatta 211kms east.  The first 60kms were not too bad and RL was able to maintain a comfortable 60km/hr but, thereafter, the track was intermittently rocky and corrugated most of the way so he ended up averaging about 50km/hr.  Immediately out of Marla the soil was red with the average height of the sand hills being about 5m but progressively the soil became orange and the ridges were down to 4m.  Even further toward Oodnadatta, the soil was orange to yellow with white limestone, the ridges down to 3m and the mesas (random hills popping up in mounds from the earth) were a treat of different shapes and colours.  R & R stopped near one to read a sign which requested that 4X4 drivers STOP and do not drive on them to allow them to regenerate.  There were a few larger hills like Welbourne at 353m and Mt Jane North at 272m.  For the most part the vegetation was sparse.  Having witnessed the tiny shiny black pebbles covering the soil early on, RL commented “No animals are going to get fat eating rocks! Are they?” “It’s like a moonscape.”  Having said that, R & R did see a few cattle, mainly Hereford, periodically.  They saw virtually no wildlife except a few emus on the only green patch they had seen all morning just short of Oodnadatta.  What vegetation they saw was mostly gidgee, in the creek lines coolabah grew, and on the ridges, sandhill wattle.  There were very little grasses with salt bush, spinifex and some samphire.  A section about 30kms out of Oodnadatta which was much better wooded with mallee.  Over the morning, R & R drove over a dozen grids (there are only cattle stations, no indigenous communities, along the track), saw a bicyclist and 13 vehicles heading west and fewer, only six, going the same direction as they were.  The highlight for the morning was stopping at Murdurina just east of Wooldridge Creek just before noon to look at some old yards, a wooden lined well and a turkey nest dam which were used in days long gone for watering stock.  There the ground sparkled with what looked at first like broken glass but turned out to be quartz crystal.  R & R also stopped just out of Oodnadatta at the Angle Pole which is a monument to the Overland Telegraph.  They arrived at Oodnadatta’s famous Pink Roadhouse at 1:30pm, ate lunch and spent about an hour there, wandering around in the shop and buying a couple of mud maps for $1.  RL zeroed his clock again, allowed four cars to take off ahead of him and set off for a rest area, 58kms towards William Creek, called Algebuckina, as it claimed to have a long permanent waterhole.  About 5kms south the road headed straight for Coober Pedy and RL needed to turn left to keep on the Oodnadatta Track and experience the old Ghan rail heritage.  The road and vegetation were much as it had been in the earlier part of the day but it was more undulating with dips and curves, crests and floodways, and for the most part, the old railway line ran quite close by, first on the south of the road, then on the north.  R & R stopped several times to take photos of the remnant rail bridges, the raised rail line on which wooden rail sleepers remain and the ruins of fettlers cottages. The average height of the ridges had increased to 6m near an area called Plantation Sandhills where there was a marked increase in the size and quantity of flora. R & R arrived at Aglebuckina Waterhole on the Neales River at 4:00pm.  The waterhole did indeed have water in it with the creek at 65m above sea level.  R & R arrived at the same time as a young couple from WA and they all chatted for a while. The couple moved off which meant that R & R were able to strip down somewhat and have a wash.  The bank was that dreadful black sticky mud so they did not want to go for a swim, as such.  They just hooked a bucket to a string and fetched the water up to have a shower.  It was great to feel cool and fresh as the day had become cloudy and quite sweaty.  They set up the camper and had to give it a bit of a wipe down inside as red dust had settled on everything.  RL managed to spill his coffee but that did not matter as RA had to wash the floor anyway.  It was 6:00pm before they were settled and actually enjoying their cup of coffee.  RL sent a SPOT while RA cooked dinner after which they read and wrote.  The bad news for the day, beside the dust, was that RL had lost a couple of screws from one of his spotlights and a plastic fitting for the rod over the bed had broken.  The good news for the day was that neither RL nor RA was disappointed … they had seen, and would see more, of the great Ghan story.

28/9/2018 Thursday RL slept well enough but for some reason RA was restless.  It was quite warm and still.  Despite the clouded sky the evening before and a couple of drops in the middle of the night, it did not rain.  R & R were out of bed and straight into gear.  There was a strong southerly breeze and the morning was cool as R & R drove over the track from east to west to walk around the rail bridge at Algebuckina.  Where R & R had slept by the waterhole, there had been three other vehicles and over the road near the bridge there were at least a half dozen more.  The first section of the road was very good and RA noticed that the road base sparkled, possibly from having quarts in it.  RL was able to drive about 75kms/hr as the road ran in the swale between the ridges much of the time.  It was relatively flat, only slightly undulating, between 70-95m with red sand ridges averaging 10m.  Mt Kingston North 206m and Mt Kingston 187m were visible but there was little vegetation on the dunes with more in the creek lines.  Interestingly, the now dry creeks have flood indicators to 2m and it is almost impossible to believe that they would ever be necessary!  R & R were armed with four good maps detailing points of interest, so they were determined to check most of them out.  In between stopping for a look and taking photographs, RA set about educating RL and reading from them.  About 8:00am R & R stopped for about half an hour at a fettlers’ cottage on Peake Station which is owned by S Kidman and Co.  Shortly after they drove past a road workers camp where no less than seven machines and a water tanker stood idle.  R & R stopped at the Warrina water tower and again to look at the Warrina Homestead ruins and the monument commemorating the Elder scientific exploration of 1891 which took 12 months to get to the Murchison in WA.  R & R noticed goanna tracks in the sand.  Shortly after that the road became more difficult in patches especially where there were rocks and corrugations on the gibber plains.  When it was poor, RL drove at less than 40km/hr.  The small smooth pebbles were seen in different colours in different places, sometime red, other times black, sometimes white and sometimes all together.  About 10:00am, RL stopped at Edward Creek railway siding to take a couple of photos with his long-distance lens as there was no public access to the site.  Edward Creek was one of the places where R & R saw cattle, at another point they saw a pair of cows with calves and later again quite a large group both sides of the road and, surprisingly, they all seemed in fair to good condition.  The Herefords on the William’s station looked particularly good and they had a nice set of new looking yards there.  The ruins at Duff Creek, where the old rail line crossed the road, were exactly that. Ruins! A pile of rubble! There followed, a couple of sections of road with dips, the first about 5kms and the second, about 8kms which was peculiar in that there were ridges with black rock jutting out rather than the orange sand ridges.  Then there was a low-lying section of about 8kms where vegetation was nearly non-existent before the last 20kms into William Creek where orange sand ridges averaged 7m in height.  It was cloudy and not too warm when R & R got out at William Creek about noon, having driven from Algebuckina 146kms in 4 hours.  They wandered around and took photos of everything and noted that the biggest attraction was to take scenic flights over Lake Eyre but that was not on their to do list so about 12:45pm, R & R were back on the Oodnadatta Track again.  RL zeroed his clock again as per instruction on the strip map in his 4WD book and set out for Coward Springs about 74kms away.  The road out of William Creek was as corrugated leaving town as it was going in.  Its condition improved and degenerated several times over the afternoon and RL drove accordingly.  Generally, it was flat to mildly undulating and gradually decreasing in height above sea level down to about 30m, with white or light orange sand ridges (like the Irrapadana Sandhills) averaging in height from 7-8m.  In between, mesa and hills were seen with Beresford Hill at 72m and Kewson Hill at 42m being a couple of the largest.  Again, generally speaking, there was very little vegetation.  A strong southerly breeze blew from the south and increasingly the clouds built up and darkened in the sky.  RL turned west a couple of kilometres before stopping at Strangways Ruins and Springs for lunch about 1:30pm.  The ruins were fantastic examples of their former use as both cattle station homestead and overland telegraph station.  R & R found the springs most interesting as they had never seen anything like that before.  The mounds were depressed in the middle and where water might have flowed in the past over the lip of the mound, they no longer flowed.  But inside, each was damp enough to support sedges and grasses and succulents over the edges.  The ground was crispy and dry while ribbons of white crystal salts and minerals showed were water had flowed or seeped.  R & R stopped again shortly before 3:00pm and spent about half an hour looking around Beresford.  There a ruin of a rocket tracking emplacement was on one side of the road and on the other, the ruins of Beresford Siding.  These were different from the others in that the dam and its stone catchment area were still in excellent condition near the water tank and desalination plant along with a building.  R & R did see some cattle on both sides of the road shortly after that and about 5kms west of Coward Springs they saw a police car heading west.  Throughout the day they had seen three cars going east, 16 going west as well as three motor cyclists and had driven over three grids.  It was 4:00pm when R & R pulled into Cowards Springs and paid $24 for a site for the night.  Rainbow bee eaters and swallows flew round the athol pines, tamarisks and date palms (Afghan cameleers originally planted two acres at Coward Springs in 1898) as R & R were shown their spot.  The manager said that the good numbers of rainbow bee eaters were a sign of an early and long summer. The facilities were great.  After setting up, R & R went for a dip in the spa, a spring which was first bored in 1887 and flowed out to create a vast wetland area.  The bore was officially rehabilitated in 1993 and supports a more reduced wetland area.  R & R enjoyed its 29*C bubbling water, were chilled a little by the cool breeze on their way back but had a shower to warm up again.  The toilet and shower blocks were built using old rail sleepers and the water was heated by feeing a sleeper into the fire base of a donkey heater.  R & R downloaded RL’s photos on to the laptop and did some deleting.  While RA prepared dinner, RL sent a SPOT message.  Interestingly, both William Creek and Coward Springs had Optus (because they won the contract) service but not Telstra!  While R & R read and wrote after dinner, there were just a few drops of rain … but it did not eventuate into anything more than that.

29/9/2018 Saturday It was a windy night and, when R & R woke shortly after 6:00am, the sky was dark and a strong cold wind blew from the south but it had not rained and did not really look like it was going to.  R & R had breakfast and set about the business of packing down as soon as possible because they wanted to investigate the restored station shed and its museum contents.  The building was only two roomed but most tastefully decorated with information and images.  It read: If these walls could talk … and … Today becomes tomorrow’s heritage.  R & R walked around the campground taking photos of everything before leaving.  RL zeroed the trip meter and set off for The Bubbler and Blanche Cup in the Wabma Kadabu Conservation Park.  The track was no less than shocking, but the presentation of car parking and boardwalks was exemplary.  Both mound springs had moving water and around them there was plenty of vegetation including ground cover, sedges, reeds and succulents.  Everywhere there was a white crystalised crust where the spring water had run at some time.  From the top, the view in every direction showed nothing but low-lying flood plains with little or no vegetation.  Only Hamilton Hill, an extinct mound spring mesa, at 40m stood above an otherwise flat and barren plain.  Having spent about 45minutes there, RL zeroed the trip meter again as instructed by the strip map and headed for Marree 126kms in a south easterly direction.  The old Gahn railway continued to run close to the road.  R & R were able to spot many, many bridges mostly small and damaged that remained visible from the road as it went through the creeks and dips.  They did not dare to hazard a guess at the number of bridges that the entire line would have had between Adelaide and Darwin.  Talking of dips – some travellers must have been having fun with the signs.  Graffiti modifications to Dip signs included: Lucky, Dip ping, Skinny, Shit, Stick, French Onion.  The vegetation was sparse and gibber stones covered much of the surface.  R & R stopped just to see all the different colours of rocks.  Margaret Creek, just before Curdimurka Siding, had a concrete crossing as did a couple of others on the track but it alone had water in it.  R & R stopped at the restored Curdimurka Siding for about 40 minutes and looked around the building, tracks, telegraph poles, monument, tank and desalination plant.  They were both impressed with the flag pole which still had beneath it the Australian Coat of Arms fashioned in different shades of concrete.  Quite remarkable!   There were nearly a dozen cars pulling in and out while R & R were there.  It was only ten minutes later, about 11:30am when RL exclaimed, ”That’s Lake Eyre.” and RA responded, “Oh my goodness!”  They were headed for the Lake Eyre South Lookout but had not expected to see such a huge expanse of white.  “Twelve metres below sea level.” RL stated reading the sign as he turned into the cordoned off car park.  As with the mesa warnings, there were signs about not driving on the lake’s surface.  Interestingly, the road had been travelling toward a level of about minus five metres below sea level and the single sand dune on an otherwise flat scape was about zero metres above sea level.  Again, there were just less than a dozen cars popping in and out to take a quick snap.  It was noon as R & R were about to continue.  They had been travelling downhill from Coward Springs, a distance of only 36kms, for about four hours, including all the stops.  They expected that they would soon be travelling uphill again and hoped that they would not take too long to cover the next 90kms.  Beyond Lake Eyre, it took about 15kms for the road to be up to sea level again and another 15 kms for it to be up to 25m above sea level.  The ground as well as the road base glistened with crystal in the noonday, nearly cloudless sky.  The sandhills were lighter, ochre in colour and quite distinctive from the mesas in that the dunes were more rolling in shape while mesas tended to have a defined end and a flat top.  For a while, R & R could see the Hermit Range in the distance beyond the ochre sand ridges and eventually they drove through it and beyond.  Hermit Hill at 122m was dark brown, almost chocolatey, colour like all the hills in the range and stood distinctly above everything else.  The ranges also heralded mallee scrub which was a change from the lack of vegetation R & R had seen and would see again after the range.  Not long after, the countryside opened up to bare and flat again with a few mesa.  R & R stopped at Alberrie Creek for lunch at 12:40pm.  There were some rail ruins but they had been fenced off along with some other interesting art works or sculptures.  It could only be called Artscape and each piece stood up out of the near barren earth.  Naturally, R & R took photos!  Several others had already stopped and taken their shots.  At 1:30pm, R & R were heading east again.  At the boundary of the Callanna Station, there was a well maintained dingo proof fence, because the boundary distinguished the cattle rearing country from that which reared sheep as well.  For a while R & R travelled through mesa like hills to 150m making up the Willouran Ranges before it became flat again.  They stopped to check the straps on the tyre and jerry cans on the roof rack as the road had been pretty corrugated in several patches.  Shortly after 2:00pm, RL stopped at the Wangianna ruin briefly as by then R & R had seen inside almost all of the fettlers’ cottages.  It still had its roof on, though it had not been renovated.  R & R saw cattle at Brolga Bore and a few more shrubs, saltbush and coolibah briefly before it was barer again with only a few wattles.  Marree was a welcome sight at 3:00pm.  R & R just sat in the car and had a coffee before doing anything.  Eventually, they got out and looked around to see what the conditions of free camping at the back of the hotel were.  All sorted, they sat and looked through maps and threw around some ideas about what to do next.  RL read a while and RA finished the diary from the day before.  Then they had a shower.  For some reason the SPOT was not working as it should so RL was unable to send a message, as he usually would when there was no phone reception, while RA prepared dinner.  After dinner they read and wrote some more.  For some reason, there had been nearly double the traffic going both ways than there had been the day before.  It had truly been an amazing journey following the Oodnadatta Track … and RA suspected they were yet to see the last of the old Ghan railway.