Settling

So far on this trip I've been on the move all the time, heading for a different spot every day, so I feel like I haven't really settled down anywhere and set up a good base camp. However, I've just come back to "Mainwater Well" in the Gammon Ranges, I'm planning on staying here for a few days, or more.

I stayed here the night before last, unintentionally though. I spent the night before at a little spot just inside the ranges, planning to spend the next day exploring some of the camp sites. I had come down this way with the intention of following the track straight past Mainwater Well, out through a sheep station and back on to the main road to Leigh Creek to get some supplies. It was late in the day, so I would have gotten to town just in time to book in to the camp grounds and put a load of washing on, except, the owner of the sheep station had fenced off the gate. Completely within his rights, I know, but it was a little annoying. I followed the fence line up and down a few hundred metres looking for a way through, but figured I'd be best going back to Mainwater (yes, past the creepy looking ghost homestead!), light a fire and go back to town in the morning.

The next day, I did just that. I took the other half of the 4WD loop track back to the main road through the ranges, popped up to Arkaringa to fill up (and endure some tourists with more dollars than sense) before heading back to Leigh Creek, where I filled up my water, bought some groceries, posted a letter back home and booked myself into the camp site to put a load of washing on and have a hot shower.

So now I'm back, my clothes box is smelling fresh, I'm smelling fresh, my pantry is overflowing and I'm ready to settle in.

Read more!

"You Gotta Come Back In October..."

"You gotta come back in October" they said, "You have to see the Ranges in Spring," I was told, "the air is crystal clear after the winter rains and the sunsets have the most amazing colours". That's what I was told when I was here in April, now here we are, it's the first day of October, I'm back here, and what do I see? ...NOTHING! Yep, that's right, the air is so thick with dust that everything is lost in a haze, it feels like I'm in downtown Melbourne on a Thursday afternoon! I went for a walk this afternoon, I climbed up one of the bigger hills near camp and could only see one range of hills. Yep, just one, when there would usually be five or six from that viewpoint. One thing I'll give it though, the light is very soft, if I were a portrait photographer out here, or maybe a painter, I'd probably be having a blast... well, maybe not as a painter, the wind is still pretty insane!

Read more!

Nothing like a nice fresh shower to perk you up!

I was at the Pink Roadhouse in Oodnadatta this morning. It's an interesting place actually, it's pegged as the driest town, in the driest state on the driest continent... yet some fools still chose to live there???!!! There's a little general store and a museum there, but life seems to revolve around the big, pink roadhouse. Oh, there's also a cinema! Imagine a dozen old church pews on the side of the road, an oversized basketball backboard with a speaker attached to the top, and that's the cinema... I didn't think to check when the next screening was...

Anyway, this roadhouse, it's very interesting, it is in possibly the blokiest location possible (last port of call before the Simpson Desert, every seriously laden 4WD has to stop here for fuel, water and to repair their tires), yet, the whole thing is PINK! Maybe it was once hot pink, but after years of sun and fading it's settled on a nice, delicate 'fairy-floss' pink. Very manly, very manly indeed! Well, I ended up hanging around there for a good few hours just watching the different folk come and go. There were the newly retired folk who wanted to try their hand at the Oodnadatta track, and were just going up as far as Marla, or just coming back from there. Then there were the real mucho blokes, big fat 4WD's loaded down with swags (cos real men like to sleep on the ground, with bugs, and snakes... apparently...), fuel cans, one guy even carrying a whole tree stump on his roof, saying that he can never find decent firewood out there! What really got my attention, was a cyclist, that's right, a dude in tight shorts peddling up the track. Definitely not something you see every day! It turns out he was on his way to a big race somewhere... I had to wonder how many other guys in tight shorts I'd have to dodge on my way out of here!

If you're a people watcher, I can't recommend the pink roadhouse enough as a place to just sit and watch the world go by (albeit somewhat out of the way).

The food wasn't bad either, I had their special vegie-burger... I'll hand it to them, the most inventive use for frozen 'Bubble & Squeek' patties I've seen yet!

After a couple of hours I thought it was time to move on, I was getting odd looks from the girl with a funny accent working the counter (turns out she was Canadian... out here...), so I grabbed a souvenir from the book exchange rack and headed off 'down the track'

I was aiming for William Creek, it was the next place along that had showers and while I was still on the safe side of a week, I though it best to have a quick scrub. When I arrived there was a convoy of about a dozen cars (with 28 guys!) that had come from Western Australia, 'straight across the middle', as one guy put it. They were on a bit of an adventure using old Len Beadle maps (he's the guy that originally mapped out all the roads in the outback), apparently the roads had been so rough in one spot that one blokes car had actually snapped in half! You never know just how much merit to give these sorts of stories, but they seemed serious, and all appeared to have their story straight, so maybe there is some poor bugger left out there somewhere waiting for a tow.

Well here's a little example of some of the dust I collected after an afternoon on the track:

So, I thought it was definitely time for a shower... until I saw the showers!

All I can say, is it's a darn good thing the lights didn't work, and the sun was setting quickly! Of course, one thing I didn't consider, apart from drinking water, everything out here is bore water, and this stuff seemed extra salty. By the time I got out of the shower, I felt like I'd just come out from a swim at the beach and needed a good rinse off! Mmmm... bore water & soap, instant dread-locks!

Since it was getting on I ended up just spending the night here. I hadn't really put any thought into it before, but this was the first time I've camped on the 'other side' of the dog fence, I still didn't think of it until I had my first experience of a dingo nosing around my camp late at night, what a creepy feeling! Dingoes are weird because they don't really make any noise, even when they walk they're virtually silent, so you never really know just quite where they are. I've heard they do odd things too, but I wasn't expecting to wake up to something lightly scratching up under my wheel arches! Okay, I'll admit, I got a little freaked out for a second, the metal under there is pretty thin, so it sounded like this thing was almost in the car! I had visions of that gremlin creature on the Simpsons that follows Bart to school and starts tearing the bus apart. Eventually I stuck my head out the back window and yelled at them to nick off, even then I never saw the thing, just a distant bush rustle as it passed through.



Read more!

Getting over a let-down and going in search of new adventures!

So I arrived at the Painted Desert yesterday, a six month dream come true! Driving through Arkaringa Station and past the homestead was a bit of a buzz, it was the first building I'd seen since setting foot on the Moon Plains that morning. I must admit, as much as it was probably a very ordinary site, it was still pretty impressive. Green grass and lush gardens in the middle of dusty pastures and dry creek beds. I passed a few of their cows on the way in and they looked happy enough, which was a good sign.

The one thing that let me down though, was the big sign near the homestead that read "No Camping. 15km." ...Crap! I knew you weren't allowed to camp right at the hills that I planned to shoot because they were actually on private property, but 15K's away?! C'mon! I got over that dissapointment pretty quickly when I saw the line of hills appear over a rise in the road, and I thought the grass of the homestead was impressive! WOW! My initial plans were to spend maybe a week out here, up before dawn and back to camp after dark, exploring every hill, coming back to shoot it in the perfect light, I was going to have a blast!

Well... that's what I thought at least!

When I finally found the first place to camp (over 7K's from the nearest hill I wanted to explore!) it was pretty ordinary I have to say. Sure, there was plenty of room (as indicated in my "Camping" book when they mentioned caravan access), but it was in the middle of nowhere, near a dried up creek bed with a few shrivled up shrubs for shade. So really, it was a flat patch of dirt out in the open. Ok, under normal circumstances that probably would have been fine, throw the annex up out the back, get a fire going and enjoy a good meal before an early start... but these weren't normal circumstances... the wind that had been blowing pretty much since I left Melbourne was still at it, even up here. There was no way I'd be getting a fire going out here, much less getting the annex up without it flying halfway home before I pegged it down. I struggled to cook a quick dinner on my gas burner (shielding it from every possible angle, it still went out twice) and just hid inside Red reading until it was bedtime.

In the morning I was up early and heading back to the hills to catch the morning light. ...unfortunately, so was the wind...

After a pretty ordinary sunrise over some (probably, if I hadn't been in such a grumpy mood) pretty impressive land features, I decided to take advantage of the morning chill and walk up into some of the hills.

The terrain certainly was interesting, and I eventually lightened up and started enjoying myself as I strode around these amazingly colourful (that's why it's called the "Painted" desert!) hills with my pack on and all rugged up (yep, it may not look it, but it was freezing out there!).

As much as I did eventually end up enjoying myself, by the time I got down off the hills my mind was definitely made up. 'Yep', I've seen the place, it's impressive, I'll come back another day. Possibly with other people, to make that barren camp site not seem quite so lonely, but definitely when this wind is not here!

Leaving the beautiful scenery behind me (to be honest, I don't know if I even looked in the mirror as I left!) I sped off in a cloud of dust (well, actually, and this is the surprising thing, there is almost NO dust around! The wind has blown it all away! ...G'day Sydney, how you enjoying it? he... he... he...) towards Oodnadatta, the driest town in Australia.

Read more!

Leaving the boy and going solo

So I left Zeke with Danny in Coober Pedy to head for the Painted Desert. I left the boy in his Step-Grandaddy's capable hands for a couple of reasons, firstly, I knew Zeke wouldn't like it further North where I was heading (he was having enough trouble with the heat in Coober Pedy!), but also because I was hoping to pop into the Gammon, and maybe Flinders Ranges at some point on the way back to Adelaide. Of course, being National Parks, they tend to discourage four-legged visitors.

After filling up Big Red, having a quick lunch (hot chips and a day old corn-dog) from the diner at the servo I left one final phone message before heading out of range for who knows how long, then was on the road!

It was pretty exciting to finally be headed for Arkaringa (in the Painted Desert). I had wanted to get out there in April, but it was just a bit too far out of the way for the time I had available, that hasn't stopped me visiting there many times in my dreams since then though, and now I was finally on my way! To get to Arkaringa from Coober Pedy, you take the Oodnadatta road and turn off at Mt Barry, which means you have to pass through "Moon Plains". Moon Plains has to be one of the creepiest places I've ever been to in my life, I don't even know where to begin describing it! What's there? Well, there's nothing out there! Well, that's not entirely true, there's rocks out there, millions and millions of jagged, sharp rocks for as far as the eye can see, and the sandy ground has an odd, sort of green hue about it.

There's no hills on the horizon to get a sense of scale or distance, no trees to cast a shadow, or to give you an indication of whether it's windy or not. There's just nothing out there! At one point I pulled up figuring, what better place to get a photo of Robot Man than on Moon Plain. When I opened the door it was wrenched from my hand by a blustering gale, which was a real surprise, because with no trees, or even grasses to give an indication I had forgotten it had been windy at all! Stepping out of Big Red felt a lot like stepping out on the moon landing reckon, as soon as my feet hit the ground I sank a good inch or so. No, not because I'd had day old corn-dogs for lunch two days in a row (hey, we were sight-seeing and didn't have time to prepare anything better, okay?!), but because the odd, greenish sand had consistency much more like ash than any sand I've ever known. I snapped a couple pictures of Robot Man as quickly as I could, then rushed back to the safety of Big Red! What added to the creepiness out there, was that it was deathly silent. Although the wind was strong enough to push you back a few steps if, with no vegetation to be blown about, there was nothing to make any sound. Creeeepy! The picture doesn't really show the greenness of the ground too much, maybe it was just from the reflections of all the rocks, you can, however, see a couple rather deep footprints in there! (...and an exhausted Robot Man!)

Leaving Moon Plains behind could not have been a more comforting feeling if there was a Mr Whippy waiting at the other end, I was just so happy to be out of there and see trees again! I was even happier when I came across an overflowing bore and took the chance to fill up on water for washing up etc. From here on it's just a straight dash across Mt Barry, past Patsies Car and on to the Painted Desert, woohoo! Although, I will admit, I almost missed the turn-off!

...To Be Continued!




Read more!

It's amazing what you can find out here!

They say you can get anything in a big city... I say, you can find even more out here!




This is Robot-Man, probably weighing up whether this might be a fixer-upper, or if he should just settle for the old Torana around the corner...

Read more!

Coober Pedy

This photo is of you-know-who looking out over a section of "The Breakaways", an amazing area just out of Coober Pedy with incredible views of some very strange looking natural rock formations in every direction. This was our last stop for the day after having a good tour around town, seeing all the sites including some very interesting dugout houses, and an underground Croatian church (what?!).
In our travels we came across an eccentric old man living on top of a hill next to "The Big Winch" overlooking town. He had the best, biggest, weirdest collection of junk I have ever seen! He also had his own little mine, a tunnel about one meter wide going straight down. He had a swing seat attached to an old electric winch that he got his wife to lower him down on (reminds me of the old guy from The Never Ending Story... "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife!"). What a crazy old fella! I bought a souvenir piece of rock from him just because he was so much fun to chat withand had some really kooky things, like (according to him) the original Watergate confession by Nixon, on an old audio reel, nailed to the side of his shed! Conspiracy theorist? I'll let you decide for yourself!
After watching the sunset at The Breakaways it we headed back to the creek wh camped at the night before. I'm still sitting there now as I write this, sort of deciding where to go from here. I'm going to head towards Oodnadatta to go out to Mt Arkaringa (and maybe find a shower!), I think I might head off today, but we'll see, there must be a couple cups of tea between now and then anyway. The hardest thing (and probably what's stopping me from packing nd heading off right now) is that I'll be leaving Zeke here with Danny and won't see him until I get back to the Barossa Valley in a couple weeks, I'm going to miss him SO much!!! This is because I'm sure it'll be a little warmer further North, and I'm also planning on going through a couple National Parks, which, of course, don't allow dogs, what a shame! Danny and Zeke get on really well, they both like just sitting around, taking the occasional stroll, then sitting down again. When I went to the Flinders Ranges Zeke stayed with Mum and Danny for a week and a half and had an absolute blast. I guess I'm just a little more worried about him out here, he really doesn't like the heat! Although it hasn't been too hot yet, I think after the coming cooler days there's going to be a warm one, so I just hope they can find a big shady tree somewhere.
Well, if I do head off today, I don't know when I'll come near an internet connection again, but I'll still make an effort to write the odd bit and upload them when I can.



Read more!

Rocketland!

We finally arrived in Woomera last night. The winds were absolutely insane! Danny said he's been in Woomera when it was windy (and it can get windy) but he'd never seen anything like this before! Next to where I pulled up there was a fully laden 4WD parked, with what looked like a mound of tarps covered in a card table. Danny told me that this couple had pulled up and attempted to put up their dome tent in the wind, but gave up and just threw a tarp, table and a handful of bricks on top... we had a good (quiet) chuckle... There was NO way you could put a tent up in wind like that!

After a being gently (ha ha!) rocked to sleep I woke feeling fairly well rested and ready to take a look around town. Woomera is the home of rocket and weapons testing in Australia, which was really exciting on two counts, firstly, I absolutely love space stuff, used to sit out watching the stars when I was a kid, trying to spot satellites (this was out on the farm, before I moved to the city and forgot what stars were). A couple of times we found fallen weather balloons on our property, I think my brother had me going for quite a while that they were actually from space ships, or aliens or something. Secondly, I'm helping with a project at the moment, a story about a Robot Man (possibly named 'Robert', or, my favourite, 'Ro-Bert'!), I won't give the story away, but basically (I think) it's going to be about him trying to get home, so I thought Woomera would make the perfect first stop for him.

There's a neat museum here, unfortunately it wasn't open while we were there, so we just headed back to "Spuds" to fill up and have a coffee before pushing on to Coober Pedy. Spuds is a roadhouse in Pimba, just a couple minutes out of Woomera, where you can get a hot shower for $3.50, and stay the night for a gold-coin donation (which means $1 I guess :P). The coffee here, well, you get two options, put your money in a machine and it'll make it for you (these always remind me of that email going around with the monkey hiding in the machine pee'ing in the coffee), or you buy a sachet of stale instant coffee, and try to find where their hot water tap is... Living in Melbourne for the past however-many-years I'm a little more discerning about my coffee than I used to be, so before I left I picked up a fresh box of frothy instant latte & cappuccino sachets, so we just sat outside and made our own.


Read more!

Day two, the storms continue!

After a bit of a slow start again this morning I was off heading to meet Danny at Woomera, it would have been a nice drive were it not for a) lots of roadworks along Pt Wakefield Hwy, and b) THIS FREAKIN WIND THAT JUST WON'T LET UP!!! I swear my fuel economy was nearly about half what it normally is, and it took me easily an hour longer than I had anticipated to get to Woomera.

I stopped off at one point along the way to try and find a geocache I had plugged into my GPS that morning. When I pulled off the road and headed along the little track I soon realised that the thick, red soil had been turned into a deep, dirty orange mush by the storms. When my GPS pointed me to head one more kilometer up a particularly squelchy looking bit of track, I thought since it was getting late anyway, it was probably time to get back to the road and just continue on my way.

While I was pulled up however, there was a brief break in the clouds, so I was able to get a quick snap of the railway that winds through the outback. I'm not sure what line it is, the one that The Ghan takes maybe? I think it's written on one of my maps, will have to check that... it's funny though, scene's like this make me think of the American mid-west, I think that just goes to show how much TV has Americanised us and we don't realise how great and varied our own country is! There is SO much out here, just the journey getting to our destination is amazing, there is always something to look at and go "Woooow!".

Read more!

What a start to a trip!

¨Well I'm on the road again, and what a start to a trip! I had planned to leave early Sunday morning (the 20th), but Saturday nights pizza had a different agenda!

After spending a mad afternoon organising Big Red, packing my gear and finishing off a couple last-minute jobs for people, the plan was to spend a quiet evening with my girlfriend over dinner and movie. We thought we'd be all class and get pizzas. Well, something on one of those fancy pizzas didn't agree with me and I was up all night enjoying them again and again (hey, there's nothing quite like getting your moneys worth!), then slept all of Sunday barely able to move. Long story short, I am now up and away, albeit a day late, but still, after the mad rush of Saturday, it was actually nice to be able to spend a relaxing day doing nothing before I left, even if it was just because I wasn't able to do anything!

On the way to Adelaide, severe weather warnings started coming through on the radio, they made it sound like I was driving into a hurricane... At least I'd managed to fix the wipers before leaving! Not to worry though, turns out that it was Leonard Cohen's birthday, so the radio was having a bit of a special which meant I got some great music to sing along to.

Out of Murray Bridge and climbing the hills was the usual uneventful leg, apart from playing 'tag' with a truck as we rollercoastered up (my chance to catch him) and down (boy can those things move when they've got gravity on their side!) the hills. Over the last hill a heavy fog descended making it slow going from there, all the way down to the city.

We arrived safely at Dad's place welcomed by hot soup and gale-force winds!



Read more!