25 June 2016

Our travels continue into the northern realms of South Australia with a new focus on arriving at Uluru (Ayers Rock).  This long distance travelling and not working is intellectually challenging however over the past couple of days we have achieved a couple of major successes:

• Yesterday we left Map 94-95 and moved onto Map 93 and now its Map 128 where we will stay for some days.  Maps 94-95 cover a lot of country and we spent many days on those pages but no more and who knows when these pages will be visited again; one of those mysteries for the life of the traveller.
• The second major achievement was a 2 minute shower.  Up here water is so scarce you pay 20 cents for 2 minutes of water.  You can continue to insert more 20 cent pieces to get more but I saw this limit as a clear challenge.  A complete wash, not just the grubby bits, including washing my hair in 2 minutes.  It’s got to be a record.
• Finally, I achieved a hat trick with drive-through camp sites.   Yes, I can reverse onto a site but a drive-through makes life so easy both for the arrival and exiting part of the visit.  Renmark, Port Augusta and now Coober Pedy; feeling pretty smug.

To other matters:

• We had assumed finding a campsite each night would not be a problem. I mean it’s the middle winter, there are no school holidays and we are in the middle of the outback.  And yet at 4.00pm there were about 12 vans queued up waiting to check into the park we had chosen to stay at in Coober Pedy.  Who are these people and why are they not at work?  There were some young families doing the big trip, a family from Switzerland enjoying a three week trip through the centre of Australia and then there are all these retired people filling the camp grounds.  The previous Treasurer was right, they should be back at work and leaving the roads open and campsites available.  We have now had to book way ahead only to discover camp grounds at Uluru and Kings Canyon are all booked out!  These people should be at home preparing their tax returns.
• 5 of the top 10 pizza shops in Australia is in Coober Pedy.  It’s a long way to go for a pizza but they are outstanding.   We shared an El Paso which sported jalapeno chillies amongst other spicy things and a Coat of Arms which included kangaroo and emu.  Don’t you love a country that has a pizza that includes the meat of the two animals on our coat of arms.   I can’t imagine buying a pizza with bald eagle meat in the US or lion meat in the UK.
• The country is so flat it’s hard to work out where the creeks begin and where they end.  They seem to start from nowhere and go nowhere, they connect to nothing and just seem to vanish somewhere in the distance.  They could probably flow in either direction depending on where the rain had fallen.
• They have a habit up here of naming homesteads (ranches) after nonexistent mountains.  There is Mount Cavenagh. Mount Willoughby, Wellbourn Hill and many others.  Trust me there are no mountains, possible a slight hillock but that’s it.   It was probably just a ploy to make the properties sound attractive.  Cavenagh Hillock, Willoughby Slight Rise or Wellbourn Mound don’t grab the imagination.
• There are many signs along the roads warning of wandering cattle.  Unfortunately the cow silhouette they use is of a  healthy looking dairy cow with a full udder.  The cows up here show no resemblance to such an animal.
• After 40 years we finally visited the place where Barb and I met.  Back then it was a wind mill, a large iron water tank, cattle troughs and one dirt track.  Now it’s on a sealed highway, has a road house and petrol station, there are permanent residents, a mailbox, a police station, camp ground and motel.  We couldn’t find the original bore or tank; it should have been made a heritage site.
• We are now at Uluru or Ayers Rock.  Its bucketing with rain and the rock is nowhere to be seen.  Hopefully the rain will stop tomorrow.  Of course the time to come will be in a month’s time when the desert flowers are in full bloom. It’s like fishing; it’s always you should have been here yesterday when the fish were biting.

That’s enough and with all this rain I am ready for a glass of wine.  Tomorrow we plan for a 10km walk around the rock if it’s still there and it hasn’t sunk down into a desert bog.