Riding in the Desert

We have been to some of the interesting places in the Finders Ranges at our last stop, but probably left it short of where we could have, mainly due to the poor weather we had there. Sarah has written a pretty good summary of our time there, but I’ve added a few of my photos here.

When we divide and conquer we give the kids the option of who they walk with, and Heidi came with me on both of the walks we did. Blinman Pools was an interesting challenge and completely different country to the head of the Heysen Trail which we walked a few days later.

The rain was really getting me down there, but we did have unlimited fire wood, and we were able to cook on the fire for all of our meals there, which is a bit more interesting than using the two burner stove.

All in all I was glad to leave the Flinders, but it was all about the weather, and my (mistaken) belief that if we headed into the desert then surely we’d get sunshine and no rain. Well that sort of happened but not really.

We headed north to Marree, which was a town in which we were sort of trapped as a family back in the 70’s. Back then we had come out from Brisbane and down the Birdsville Track, along which the transfer case of our Landcruiser died. This meant an unplanned stop in Marree while a transfer case was sent up from Adelaide and then fitted. I have a reasonable memory of the stay there – we made friends with the local kids, who had frilly lizards for pets and a go-cart which we pushed around the flat streets. There was no playground, and the school was closed for holidays and we weren’t allowed in there, where there was a seesaw (the only bit of play equipment in the town.

We were camped in the yard of the police station and I remember playing in the jail a fair bit. Back then we went and looked at Lake Eyre (I think in another vehicle) and I have a very clear memory of the lake – it was full of water (which back then was a 25 year event on average) and looked exactly like a very calm ocean to me.

We headed north to Muloorina Station (to camp), which has a public access road through private property to get to Lake Eyre – this has been pretty high on my list of things to do while on this trip, and I was very disappointed to find out the roads to Lake Eyre are all closed due to rain damage that happened last year. There is a bit of politicking going on with the roads being closed – South Australian State Government is responsible for maintaining these PARs, but they don’t have any $$. So last year they finally got some Federal $$ to repair the roads into this National Park. Then they need to go to tender and finally (at about the time I rang them) they had appointed a contractor who would be beginning work repairing the road some time in the next month.

Too bad if the trip you have been planning for years runs into the bureaucracy, but that is exactly what happened…so there I was, only 46km from Lake Eyre (North – which is by far the bigger lake)… so what to do?

So I hatched a plan to ride my bike out to the lake, or at least to see if I could get anywhere down the sandy track. I went first thing one morning and Sarah and I had a contact plan using the Garmin In-reach gps/sat phone so I could check in and let her know I was alright. I packed my lunch and water and set off for the great unknown.

I have attached a few photos of where I reached Lake Eyre (Lake Eyre South, which is a small part of the whole) and the bike trip. This was about 20km each way, and when I got back to camp I was very happy I didn’t try to go further.

The Garmin communications had failed while I was out, and Sarah had been getting a bit worried about why I wasn’t sending messages as planned. It turned out that Garmin had a network issue just on that day (our first use of the device in real circumstances) and messages were delayed. I survived and my message eventually got to Sarah over the course of the next 24 hours, which was completely useless to us.

The sandy bits of the track on the way home were far more challenging than on the way there but I did make it back by lunch time and Sarah’s stress levels diminished rapidly after that.

We enjoyed the hot springs at Muloorina (although this looked like a bore to me) and also the water hole, which was a great place for the kids to have a swim, although a bit on the chilly side in the water.

More fires at Muloorina, and I finally took the time to try cooking a cake on the fire – this worked surprisingly well, and assuming that we have more fires in the future, it will hopefully become a regular thing.

We had one eye on the weather, and we reckone we had to bail out a day earlier than planned, or we would be trapped where we were, and miss our cave booking in Coober Pedy. We packed up on Saturday for an early exit on Sunday, back to Marree for a quick fuel up, an then we raced the weather up the Oodnadatta Track to William Creek.

We didn’t really beat the weather, but arrived in William Creek with the rain. We set up a quick version of our camp and headed to the pub for dinner (after a fantastic shower at the campground).

Next morning we awoke to fog, and to the news that the roads we had travelled on Sunday were all now closed due to the rain. Some great decision making going on there (thank you Sarah).

We set off in the fog at about 9.45am and eventually at about 10.30am the skies were clear. The road itself was a bit greasy in places, but mostly OK and no real challenge for the driving – just needed to go along at a steady rate to avoid any issues.

We arrived here in Coober Pedy in good form, and have now spent one night under a (very solid) roof for the first time in many months for some of us. More adventures to come, but I am very hopeful that even our rainmaking powers will not be any good when we get into the real desert…