We left our intrepid travellers sleeping in a roadside rest area about
1/2 hour east of Ayer's Rock. At about 4 am a truck -
After we had breakfast and helped jump start the car mentioned in the
last installment, it was a couple of hours back to the Stuart Highway
and then back toward the south.
Driving all day, we passed a RoadTrain which had driven off the road
on the wrong side, and toppled over! Must have fallen asleep at the
wheel. Very impressive and scarey! There was another truck in attendance
and they said no help was needed from us.
We pushed on a bit further into the evening than we normally would,
parking just north of Coober Pedy in a spot I had also slept back in
'97, where the horizon is flat all around, 360 degrees. Not much cover
for kangaroos to hide and leap out at us, and it was Saturday evening - we
wanted to go to mass at the
Coober Pedy (aboriginal: "White man in a hole") is an opal mining
town, and since there are lots of holes in the ground, and the
temperature is mostly around 100 degrees F, many folks just make their
home in cleaned-up mines. Same with the church. Nice, year-round
temperature around 70 Degrees!
So we get to church about 9:45, and a lady (turned out to be Sister
Cheryl) was coming over to cars and explaining that this was Parish
Picnic Day: the Picnic and Mass would be held outside town about 12KM,
on the Oonadatta Track - a dirt highway which heads SE about 300 miles.
So we followed her dust cloud (hadn't had 'a decent rain' for 15 months)
to where a dry streambed with a couple of stunted Eucalypts provided
some shade. Unfortunatly they didn't stop the wind, which blew the
Crucifix off the Altar (a card table), and required a folded cloth to
keep the Hosts from blowing away. Gotta give Father John credit -
No way the picnic could survive the wind, so we all adjourned to
Father's 'shed' - his garage! We quickly stopped at the store for chips
and dip so as to contribute and not freeload. Lay's Potato Chips! A
great kalamata olive dip I'd like to find here. There were the usual
potato salads, and great sausage made locally from beef grown on a
nearby 'station' (although where they grew pasturage, we don't know),
and burgers, and lamb on the 'barbie'. A lot of food for a small group!
Turns out that Father also did mass the previous day at Ayer's Rock. One
of those priests with a couple of hundred square miles to cover (or
maybe thousands - not many people!) After the picnic, we headed south
for Port Augusta again. So did Father - he had to attend an important
Diocesan Golf Match.
The next day as we approached Port Augusta, we stopped at the Arid
Lands Botanic Garden, a government study and display site for plants of
the 'Red Centre'. One entire garden area was given over to 'Eremophila',
or emu plant, which has over 250 varities, from inches high ground cover
to small trees. Mary wants to locate an importer in CA & turn our place
over to emu plants. If they'll grow in the outback, they should
do fine here!
Then groceries, gas, and our 'usual' fish and chips from Barnacle
Bill's - a favourite! After that, we headed northeast (yet another left
turn at Port Augusta) toward the Flinders Ranges.
As dusk deepened, and here there was PLENTY of cover for kangaroos, we
finally found a rest area with another camper already in residence.
Spent a cold night and awoke to a scene which could hardly be told from
the back road between our house and San Jose, in California! In the US,
the white-trunked trees would have been Sycamores, here they were
Eucalypts, so if you don't look closely...
As I passed coffee into Mary in the van, I said: "We're just a couple
of miles up Uvas Road from our house, we can be home in about 10
minutes!" It was almost creepy! So we pushed on north where the Flinders
Ranges - actual mountains - sawtooth skyline looks down on the ruins of
farms started in a particularly moist period about 100 years ago. Then
the climate turned back to normal, and the farmers had to
We went all the way to Wilpena Pound, a syncline where the mountains
dish up on all sides, enclosing a valley almost like a crater, with only
a tiny gorge allowing access. Unfortunatly, only hikers can really go
in, as there are no roads, so we felt kinda' ripped off having to pay to
enter a National Park with nothing special to see. But what the hell, it
was only $5 Australian - $2.50 to us!
All the rest areas on the highway to/from Wilpena Pound had signs
"requesting" no overnight camping. Except one, a real nice one with huge
shady Eucalyptus an 'Cypress-Pine' trees. The whole area was thick with
Next day we pulled off the road at a wind-swept rest area where my
sister, Disa, and I had camped in '97, and which felt like "The End of
The World". As we pulled back onto the road, there was a sign: "Digital
Phone Area", so we went back and used Disa's cellphone to call her at
work in Sydney. Weird to be able to call from out in the wilderness.
Then we went back to Quorn, a pleasant little town with a cool antique
shop where Mary bought a lot of neat stuff, and I talked astronomy with
the proprietor. Turns out there will be a total eclipse across the Eyre
Peninsula and thru here next year. Coming into Hawker, we managed to get
photos of a huge
From Hawker, we worked our way back to Burra on different roads. Burra
was a lot quieter on a weekday afternoon than on a Festival Sunday! Then
east toward Renmark (on your map, a town on the Murray River). We slept
in a rest area a bit east of Renmark, where there was frost on the car
in the morning - the only time on this trip.
In the morning, we turned south before Renmark, taking a tertiary
road straight south just west of the SA/Victoria border to Pinaroo. In
the spring of '97 I had found some really interesting tiny plants along
this road, and I wanted to see what it was like in the fall. Couldn't
even find the 'area of botanical interest' sign which would pinpoint the
area. Bummer. Also bummer was that Pinaroo, which had been a neat town
back then, was being repaved and was hardly accessible! Our route did,
however, take us over the Murray River on a free ferry at the town of
Walkirie. That was neat, so we headed for Echuca, a town on a big bend
of the Murray which has the world's biggest fleet of paddle-wheel boats.
In its hayday,
Go to
Part 6: From Echuca to Cowra
underground Catholic Church in Coober Pedy
at 10 AM.
he did
it all very well, even in the wind, and with flies crawling on his face
- never flinched, although the homily may have been a bit short!
abandon their
homesteads.
kangaroos and emus. We quickly counted 20 roos within a few minutes
and saw a flock of 11 emus.
flock of sulfur-crested cockatoos - big white ones,
bigger than crows.
Echuca was home to over 150 paddle-wheel steamers. Took
a ride on one, treated ourselves to a romantic candle-lit steak dinner
at "The Cock and Bull", and a motel for a good shower.