This part of the trip has taken us to through our first dirt roads and into the real outback. What an experience! The landscape and vegetation changes so dramatically as we travel through and the changes occur as quickly (well, quickly as the Exy-Jayco will let us go) as cresting the next hill.
From Melrose, we headed north and drove through the heart of the Flinders Ranges. Spectacular! Jenny’s and my photos just do not do what we’ve seen justice. From Melrose, we drove up through Quorn, Hawker, Blinman, over to Parachilna, Leigh Creek and onto Marree, the start of the Oodnadatta Track. Our first night out of Melrose was at Leigh Creek. A coal mining town consisting of what looked like mostly demountable houses. Apparently, Leigh Creek used to be located somewhere else but coal was discovered so the whole town upped sticks and moved to its present location so they could dig the old one up.
Our second night was spent at a place called Coward Springs, an oasis in the middle of the desert on the Oodnadatta Track. What a gem this place was. Originally, Coward Springs was a railway siding next to the natural springs, trees, grasses, date palms planted by the Afghan camel handlers and an old pub. There’s a lot of history to the place, with the old siding and station masters house right in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The current owners of the property have established a beautiful camping ground where visitors are able to soak away the dust in the natural, warm springs at the end of a long days drive.
Night three out of Melrose was at a place called Marla, which is at the end of the Oodnadatta Track. We didn’t actually travel the entire track because the road conditions weren’t suitable for towing a van. Instead, we left the track at William Creek and took the Coober Pedy road and re-joined the bitumen highway at Coober Pedy. William Creek has a population of around 300 the brochures said when Lake Eyre is full. At any other time, the population is 12.
Many fellow travellers said that we should see Coober Pedy and raved about what an interesting place it was. But for me, ugliness is not something I see as tourist attractiony. I guess I’m glad I saw it but if I ever want to see it again I’ll head on down to the Belconnen tip or Canberra Sand and Gravel and look at the mounds of dirt there. The original real Coober Pedy might have been worth staying in for a while but its mostly a tourist industry built around a bunch of giant ant hills and has a very artificial feel to the place.
And now we’re at Yulara, another artificial township based on tourism in the shadow of Uluru. In contrast though, what a magnificent setting. The drive from Marla to here was stunning. Red weathered rocky outcrops and the all pervasive, vibrant red desert sands. The red sandy dust is spectacular to see in the landscape, but not so spectacular to clean out of the van. When arriving at Marla after our day of dirt track driving, we had a fine film of red dust over everything inside the van and again at the end of today’s driving after the hidden dust that we didn’t manage to clean out yesterday re-covered everything we’d cleaned the night before. On top of that, a whole bunch of screws, nuts, brackets and connectors had to be tightened up after the day of bouncing. We’ve also had our first dirt track damage with a rock hit having snapped off the sink drain sullage pipe connector.
As well as enjoying the sights, I’m really enjoying visiting the pubs in the small towns we’re passing through, meeting the locals and other travellers and hearing their stories. Caravan parks are fabulous communities too and we’re picking up so many helpful tips from other travellers, particularly the 4WDers (like taping carboard over our back window so that rocks thrown up by the X-Trail and bouncing back off the front of the van don’t smash our rear window).
The other thing I’ve learnt on this trip is that as campers we used to mix in a very different world. We used to mix with all the other tent campers, mostly people around our age and some a little older, often in campervans or tent trailers. Then, we bought the Toyota Hiace campervan and that gave us entry into a new community. The tent campers were still happy to mix with us but we also entered into the world of older motor home travellers. These are mostly retirees and as youngsters in this set we often attracted many of them to our site in a camp ground. With the new Jayco camper trailer (it is NOT a caravan) we seem to have graduated into a whole world. The tent campers won’t talk to us anymore and our peers are all retirees in their 60s and 70s. They’re mostly really interesting lovely people, but come on tent campers, we’re still one of you!