Postcards from the Road

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Camp

The lack of fires at Coongie Lake meant that precautions had to be taken against the chill. The breeze was coming straight off the water of course, and it was quite early.

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One of our number was expecting more from Innamincka. I'm not sure just how much more one can wring out of a town with a population hovering around fifteen, and riding the rich oil and gas boom.

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The Cooper

Even though there was plenty of water in the river, the flats give some sort of indication that the floods bring plenty more.

The view from the back of our tent at Cullymurra.

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Cullymurra Waterhole

Just another one of those tiresome views from our tent.

Cullymurra Waterhole is on the Cooper, about 15 kilometres from Innamincka, and within a stone's throw of the place where explorer's Burke and Wills shuffled off their respective mortal coils. To be more accurate, it's a stone's throw from Burke's final resting spot, Wills made it another twenty or so kilometres.

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Colours

The desert colours provide an endless fascination for us, with the flat bits sometimes contrasting with the dunes, sometimes blending perfectly in different shades.

Who thought this stuff up?

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Moomba

Gas is just one reason why it's not that easy to find solitude in the desert any more. Oil is another. Gold exploration teams, and Japanese cyclists vie for third.

The Moomba gas structures loom like some sort of alien machine in the middle of the Strzelecki Desert, which is exactly what they are when you think about it.

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Montecollina

The water from the bore arrives at around fifty degrees celcius which is just about perfect for filling a billy to do the washing up in.

Not bad for a shower either, but a bit sulphorous to make a nice cup of tea with.

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Breakfast at Montecollina Bore

Once again the sight of waterbirds in the middle of the desert fascinated us, and for that matter everyone else we met. It's not as though it's one lost soul with a defective satnav either.

I've taken a photo similar to this one from our back steps, so I'm not sure why we needed to drive 10,000 k's just to get another!

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Alone

We were completely alone and isolated at the bore, except of course for the crew of mineral exploration blokes, their drilling team, their generator and their flood lights.

Sunset was nice though.

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Camping on the North Shore

It was a very bizarre experience, finding Montecollina Bore half way up the Strzelecki Track amid the dunes. It felt so much like camping on Fraser Island that it was uncanny.

Although the dingoes weren't quite so silent.

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Back in the red

Back in the desert our Suzuki starts to look quite small, but there again so do road trains.

It's hard to imagine how comfortable one can feel when enveloped in nothingness, but in reality one can feel very comfortable indeed.

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Guard of honour

Leaving Arkaroola, three of the ten identified pairs of Wedgetail eagles in the Flinders Ranges, watch to make sure we aren't taking anything that doesn't belong to us.

This bloke was completely unfazed as I drove slowly to within eight or ten metres of him (OK, well you tip toe towards a wedgetail and tell me how you get on), although his mates were a little more conservative.

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Re-leaving Arkaroola

Definitely too miserable for walking, and with the prospect of rain on the southern part of the Strzelecki Track we sadly decide to move on once more. It's not long before the desert flat land returns and we look over our shoulder and bid the mountains farewell.

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This isn't Kansas anymore, Toto

Of course it's still in the Flinders, but the mind numbing changes in topography and vegetation leave one wondering if one isn't in the centre of some vast landscaped garden. One moment we are walking happily in a sandy creek bed among three hundred year old red gums, then we look up and there's nothing but native pine. The slate grey sky didn't help orient us either.

A few minutes later, we'll be in a lunarscape, devoid of all but what at first glance appears to be lawn, but turns out to be a peculiar green gravel.

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Carrying On Regardless

It was cold, damp, and there wasn't a mountain in sight above the clouds, so we did the only thing we could.

We carried on along the ridgetops, stopping only for the odd gasp.

The Flinders Ranges are expecting us to return.

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Back to the Flinders

We figured that surely after a week, the rain would have left Wilpena, and we'd have a week of clear sunny skies.

We didn't figure correctly, but we also couldn't believe how much the landscape reminded us of a certain school of naive painters. Perhaps they were realists after all?

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Interpreting Road Signs in the Northern Territory - 2

"Congratulations, you've successfully negotiated the dangerous bit."

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Interpreting Road Signs in the Northern Territory - 1

"We strongly advise you take care, as there is a corner approaching over this blind crest."

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Winery

Not all wine is produced romantically in large vats hidden in dark cellars, but there is always a rolling hill in the background.

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Grapes

Do they really come in all those colours Mum?

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The Clare Valley

Then we stayed for a few days in the Clare Valley, one of South Australia's noted wine making regions, famous for its Rieslings but awfully chillly.

Grape vines can look quite splendid too.

Apparently.

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It can't be real!

We headed south into the rain and cold, relieved to be free of the beauty we had been immersed in, comforted by the site of the odd man made structure, we'd even seen a cake behind a counter at the petrol stop, then we came on this.

It wasn't enough to have bright red soil, the freshly shooting grass crop was fluorescing in the drizzle, and the autumn leaves were not a sight to which we have been accustomed.

Aaaarrgh, find me something that doesn't look like a chocolate box top... please!!

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The View Deteriorates

By the time we made it to the southern Flinders, the weather had started to close in, the views were merely breathtaking and we were really starting to lose our voices from proclaiming the "wowness" of it all at every new turn.

So we rolled further south, to return in a week or two when with just a little luck, the visibility will have improved, and we will have had time to recover from the shock of weeks of endless natural beauty.

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Arthur was right

Arthur said the Arkaroola ridgetop tour was worth doing from a number of perspectives.

He was right.

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Postcard from Arkaroola

The colours are impossibly fake, the composition like a cheap oil painting, the only trouble is, I haven't adjusted the colour and I didn't compose anything, I just held the camera at my waist and clicked.

There is some artistic genius in those cheap oil paintings after all.

Arkaroola is in the northern end of the Flinders Ranges, laden with uranium, and slack jawed tourists!

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Our first mountain sunrise

The day after leaving the desert, desperate for a break from endless beauty, it begins again. The first rays of the rising sun illuminate the peak beyond our camp as though it is translucent, and someone has just switched on the light within.

We had long since run out of superlatives, now we just mumble "wow".

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Desert's Edge

We always feel a little sorry as the road starts to improve and first hint of the end of the desert appears on the horizon. It's a wonderful place, full of contrast and subtlety, and we console ourselves with the thought that our senses will have time to recover, but we are never right in that regard either.

Towards the southern end of the Oodnadatta Track, a mountain appears on the horizon.

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Alberry Creek

The desert is full of mysteries, the Alberry Creek siding on the old Ghan line provides one of them.

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Breakfast

One of the good things about travelling light is that everything is where we need it to be when we need it.

Breakfast after sunrise at Uluru.

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Lake Eyre South

If Lake Eyre was eerie, its Southern sister didn't do a bad job in the strange department either. A lot easier to access as there is a viewing platform on the side of the Oodnadatta Track, the dunes and black tufty grass make for a fair impression of some sort of alien beach scene. All the birds are roosting on an island in the middle, some thirty kilometres from here, well over the horizon.

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Lake Eyre

just as one begins to think one's senses have had enough stimulation for one journey, one turns a corner in a sea of black desert, crests a dune, a few kilometres past the cairn erected to the memory of an Austrian tourist who perished after being bogged there just a few years ago, and there it is.

Halligan's Bay, a vast expanse of nothing, or that's what it seems.

It would normally be a mirage, but it's not, it's water in the lake, but it's very eerie. There is a breeze blowing, maybe five knots or more, yet as far as the horizon the water is so still that the sky reflects perfectly, there is no distinction between sky and water.

The horizon one presumes lies somewhere between the clouds and their mirrored twins.

There are seagulls. Seagulls for crying out loud, and the lake is so shallow they seem to be walking for kilometres.

I'm glad we saw it.

I'm really glad we didn't perish in the attempt.

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Anna Creek

Anna Creek Station is the world's largest apparently.

This is not taken after a bushfire. There is no bush to burn, no evidence of any living thing, just black gibber plains as far as the eye can see. It is simply awesome to stand in the midst of it and wonder how anything survives in temperatures that often reach the high forties and even fifties, let alone the fact that someone actually runs a business raising animals on it.

This spot is ten or twelve kilometres from Lake Eyre, at the point where ground level falls from about zero metres above sea level to roughly thirty below.

Interesting!

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(sorry I missed your birthday Mand, thanks for the wishes! Lunch when we get back perhaps?)

The Dog Fence

Somewhere between Oodnadatta and Coober Pedy.

We thought it was a figment of a colourful historical past, but the dog fence was only completed in the 1980's after almost a century of work. It is fully maintained for its entire 5,800 km length, and everyone swears it has had an effect.

We're not so sure. We've had dingoes in our camp on both sides of it, so we're sort of wondering which side is supposed to be dingo free. It's sheep country in the south, but it seems strange in this age of political correctness, that we are trying to confine a native animal to a particular territory.

One would think that no self respecting dog would be caught dead out there, but one would be wrong.

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Mullock Heaps

Coober Pedy townscape.

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The Breakaways

Awesome is a word which is overused in this day and age, but when one is standing on a cliff which was once on the edge of a vast ocean, the floor of which is now desert which stretches much further than the eye can see, there is no other word that adequately describes the scene.

Sea shells and fossilised marine life litter the place, a mere 2,000 kilometres from the present shore line.

This place is called the Breakaway, as it's said to be the point where the land and the ocean had an argument, so the ocean broke away, never to come back again.

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The clouds forming are also a bit thought provoking. We wonder where we'll get stuck when the rain comes later in the week.

West MacDonnell Ranges

A mere two or so weeks ago, I might have implied that Toowoomba would be about as high as we would be climbing this trip. Well I just hadn't accounted for Alice Springs it seems.

The Alice is actually at a slightly higher elevation than Toowoomba, even though it doesn't appear to actually be on a hill at all, something to do with the fact that the MacDonnells were something more than 4,000 metres high about 300 million years ago, according to people who know about these things, and as they've eroded, the surrounding areas have been built up a bit.

Well actually they've been built up 7 or 800 metres for several hundred kilometres around. We're about 500 k south of Alice Springs now, and about 500 metres elevation. In another 300 kilometres time, we'll be at Lake Eyre and minus 30 metres, but for now, enjoy the beauty of the now seriously stunted MacDonnells!

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It was such a special experience that I couldn't really just leave it at one picture.

The colour changes and amount of water flowing off the rock were simply unbelievable. It seems we had 9mm of rain while we were walking, and the rather leisurely ten kilometres which would normally have taken us well under two hours, consumed us for three and a half, and we wanted to do it again!

No more rock pictures, but we arrived in Marla to unexpected Next G reception and I couldn't think of a better pic to share our experience with!

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It's Raining on the Rock

Sorry to go all mushy, but JW got it spot on!

Pastel red to burgundy and spinifex to gold,
We've just come out of the Mulga where the plains forever roll.
And Albert Namatjira has painted all the scenes,
And a shower has changed the lustre of our land.

And it's raining on the Rock,
In a beautiful country,
And I'm proud to travel this big land,
As an Aborigine.
And it's raining on the Rock
What an almighty sight to see,
And I'm wishing and I'm dreaming that you were here with me.

Everlasting daisies and a beautiful desert rose
Where does their beauty come from heaven knows.
I could ask the wedge-tail but he's away too high,
I wonder if he understands it's wonderful to fly.

It cannot be described with a picture,
The mesmerising colours of the Olgas.
Or the grandeur of the Rock
Uluru has power!

And it's raining on the Rock,
In a beautiful country,
And I'm proud to travel this big land,
As an Aborigine.
And it's raining on the Rock
What an almighty sight to see,
And I'm wishing and I'm dreaming that you were here with me

© postcards from the road (and John Williamson)

Standley Chasm

Ok so this is just one wall of Standley Chasm, although part of the other is just visible in the top right, due entirely to some inept cropping work on my part.

Poked around in Alice and surrounds all day today, ready to hit the road tomorrow and probably away from the world for a week or so. When I mentioned that Toowoomba at 700 metres may well have been the highest point in our journey, I wasn't counting on the fact that Alice Springs is actually at the same elevation. This is apparantley brought about by the fact that the mountain ranges round here were originally two or three thousand metres higher than they are today, and in the erosion process, they've spread themselves over the surrounding four or five hundred kilometres!

So Standley is only a few hundred metres above ground level at best, but it was once nearly 4000 metres above sea level apparently. How do they know that stuff?

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The Plenty Highway

When we turned left at Boulia, onto the Donahue Highway, which becomes the Plenty at the Northern Territory Border, Ray's NavMan burst into sound:

"Turn left," it said, "In 768 kilometres". No, I am not making that up.

We did see a little bulldust on the way.

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Big Red

Today we rolled into Alice Springs, just on 3,000 km from home, more than half of it on unsealed roads, and well beyond the reach of modern technology. For that reason, and because, well to be frank, there are more exciting things to do than sit in front of a computer, I could be a few thousand kilometres behind with the picture.

So here's my favourite photographer doing her thing on top of Big Red, the most fearsome sand dune in the Simpson Desert.

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Still Trucking

I'm not sure how there can be an absence of time when one is essentially out doing nothing, but there is. The more nothing we do, the less time we have to do it, I haven't even finished yesterday's quota yet.

The photo was taken on the edge of the Simpson Desert near Birdsville, but we are now in Boulia, with a couple of thousand kilometres worth of adventure under our tyres and no time to update anything.

Tomorrow we're out of communication again for three days as we poke down the "highway" to Alice Springs. Nothing broken, no flat tyres ... so far.

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Charleville

We've crossed the point which lies 1000k's from the coast, which we consider to be the start of our journey. Of course it also brings unseasonal rain, and therefore impassable roads in the places we want to go. I guess there'll be lots of photos of an overcast Quilpie in coming days!

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Around the Inland Sea

Well our journey to circumnavigate the inland sea has begun, it was all uphill at first to Toowoomba, which at 700 metres above sea level is probably as high as we will get this trip, unless we climb to the top of highest peak on the Flinders Ranges just to say we have.

Here's a lovely picture looking back from Picnic Point at the top of the Great Dividing Range, from there it's all downhill until we reach Lake Eyre in a few weeks, 30m or so below sea level.

It just feels good to be finally on the road again!

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Byron Bay

Clarke's Beach Caravan Park, a bit expensive, but it is Byron Bay after all. $37.00 per night with power.

Was it worth it?

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Byron Bay

I don't intend to fill this album with photos of sunsets, but there's something about photographing a Sunset from Australia's most easterly spot. Hopefully we'll get a matching sunrise shot from the most westerly spot one day.

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Every day is Easter at Iluka, although believe it or not, this cute little bunny was stalking the dove, and would have eaten it if it had caught it. Perhaps the Easter Bunny steals eggs rather than making them?

Plenty of rabbits in the caravan park at Iluka, no great wall there.

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Frank, Carol and Jo look East to watch the sunset. How does that happen? I know in the northern hemisphere at least, the sun sets in the West.

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Intense

We've been spending a bit of time in tents lately.

This is our rather comfortable set up (the silver one in the background, next to the Suzuki.)

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Damn damn damn damn DAMN!!!

They didn't pick me!

I guess they saw through my ruse, the shape of my chest, the absence of hair where it matters, the gold tooth, and perhaps 30 years experience too many, whatever the case, I'm toast!

Human error it was, I suspect, that had them overlook me, and good luck to whichever pretty young thing gets the gong!

I must say on a serious note though, I cannot believe the vitriol in the online world from people who didn't comply with rules or who were late in applying or who simply thing Queensland Tourism are corrupt because they only shortlisted pretty people. Just what did they expect? I'm glad they didn't make it!

Hmmm... I suppose that's the end of this blog too!

We'll have to see see what the future brings!

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