Month: August 2018

We make a dash from the NT into South Australia to visit Coober Pedy. Then it’s back up the Stuart Highway from Coober Pedy to Kakadu.

(A few months ago, we posted a list of things we’ll miss about Southeast Asia. Little did we know that one item would be universal WiFi available free from virtually everywhere. Even in retrograde laggards like Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.

WiFi is hard to come by in Australia, at least in the remote regions we find ourselves in lately. One result is these long, unwieldy blog entries at infrequent intervals. Our apologies.)

As we leave King’s Canyon, we spot these camels on the side of the road.

At one time, camels – imported from India – were the only form of transport. When roads and trains appeared, the camels were released into the wild.

In a few hours, we’re in South Australia.

Coober Pedy is famous for its opal mines. The methodology seems to be: dig a hole, check for opals, move over a few metres, repeat.

Coober Pedy has a distinctly other-worldly look.

We visit the Old Timer Mine. This mine was sealed, forgotten, then rediscovered in recent times.

This is a leftover prop spacecraft from the cheesy Vin Diesel sci-fi flick Pitch Black. The area is a popular movie location. Did we mention it’s already ‘other-worldly’?

Coober Pedy is also known for its underground dwellings.

This is to escape the intense heat.

Here’s a seam of opal in the Umoona Mine.

The main reason we hot-foot it to Coober pedy is to book two seats on the Mail Run. Basically, this is a man with a contract to deliver mail to remote cattle stations twice a week. He takes passengers.

This is the Dingo Fence. North of the fence is cattle country, south of the fence is sheep country.

We’re happy that the vehicle used is no longer a bus. These days, Peter limits his passengers to four in a comfy 4WD, with a trailer for the mail.

He is an inexhaustible supply of yarns, local knowledge, and bush folksiness.

We journey 600 kilometres from Coober Pedy to Williams Creek, up the Oodnadatta Track to Oodnadata, then back to CP.

Anna Creek Station is supposed to be the world’s largest.

This is a wall enclosing an old well on the property, the year ‘1877’ engraved in a stone.

There used to be a rail line that follows the Oodnadatta Track. It was abandoned and replaced by another route when diesel locomotives came into use.

As elsewhere in Australia, we pass though several ghost towns that were once lively boom-towns.

We reach Oodnadatta in time for dinner.

The next day, we head back north up the Stuart Highway. Stopping for a coffee at the Marla Roadhouse, we spy a road train full of camels.

(Road trains, in case you don’t know, are enormous trucks pulling three or four trailers. A common sight in outback Australia.)

Not a sight you see every day.

A rally of vintage vehicles takes place along our route. This is a vintage MG at the Erldunda Roadhouse.

We mentioned that we plan to stay overnight at the Henbury meteor craters.  This we do, for one of the most unforgettable nights of our trip.

We are the only people for a hundred kilometres around. We scavenge enough wood to enjoy a bonfire under a gazillion stars.

We stop at the Ti Tree Roadhouse and make a lunch.

We wonder if this is an example of the wry Australian sense of humour.

Nope, it’s really a freezer full of frozen kangaroo tails.

We overnight in Tennant Creek and make it as far as Daly Waters the next day. At the outskirts of Daly Waters is an airfield. This was swarming with bombers and other aircraft during WWII.

There are a surprising amount of WWII sites up here. This area was largely vacant at the time – still is – but to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the threat of encroaching Japan overrunning one’s country concentrates the mind wonderfully.

This is also the land of ‘We of the Never Never‘. This is an Australian classic describing life in the outback at the turn of the last century on remote Elsey Station.

We visit the Katherine Gorge.

In Kakadu National Park, we see more water and greenery than we’ve seen in a month.

In Kakadu is Nourlangie Rock. Besides being a stunning formation in itself, it’s home to much Aboriginal paintings.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Coober Pedy to Kakadu

We wonder if the name ‘Kakadu’ is cognate with ‘Cockatoo’.

Apparently the answer is ‘no’. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but we’ve never seen so many cockatoos anywhere else. Of all kinds: sulphur-crested, red-tail and white-tail blacks, corellas.

I always consider how much cockatoos sell for in North American pet shops. As a squawky flock flies over head, I think ‘there goes $100,000-worth of cockatoos.’

 

It really is red.

Oh, wait a minute – that’s a photo of the surface of Mars. This is a photo of the Australian landscape as viewed from our maiden voyage in a helicopter.

We drive down the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs.

Alice Springs isn’t the most picturesque of towns. It’s the  closest thing to urban that we see in a while, so we spend a few days here. We visit a few museums, such as the excellent Central Australia Museum.

The Central Australian Aviation Museum tells the story of flying in the outback. It has lots of nifty aircraft, too.

These are both in the Araluen Cultural District, conveniently just across the street from our caravan park.

Megafauna Central is another impressive museum just opened in town. It features the story of big animals that used to exist until the arrival of humans in Australia, then became extinct shortly thereafter. Just like North America, where megafauna roamed the continent until the arrival of humans. Coincidence? I think not.

The grounds of our caravan park are home to birdlife galore. A flock of galahs do a Galah Quadrille on the front lawn.

(You may notice that we really like galahs.)

We want to visit the secret CIA base at Pine Gap, but can’t even find a road sign to it. No big surprise.

On the way out of town, we pass a memorial to John Flynn. John Flynn is the man who started the Flying Doctor Service in 1923, as related in another entry.

We do a loop near the West MacDonnell Range.

Along the way, we stop at these places:

We spend the night at Glen Helen.

This is the house of artist Albert Namatjira. We first hear of him at the Queensland Art Gallery. We rave about the QAG in an earlier post.

Hermannsburg itself is an interesting place.

A mission founded by hardy – or optimistic – Germans in the 1870’s.

Also home of the Hermannsburg Potters, whom we also first hear about at the Queensland Art Gallery. We consider purchasing one of their pieces but don’t find anything that matches our living-room curtains. Just kidding.

People in Hermannsburg let their stock wander free around town.

Returning to Alice Springs on our way south, we visit the Desert Park. This is a good place to see elusive denizens of the outback up close.

Like these thorny devils.

Or these beautiful red-tailed black cockatoos.

And this banded lapwing, fussing over her eggs.

Even some dingoes.

More about dingoes to come.

Heading south, we detour to visit the Henbury meteor craters.

This is a place of splendid isolation. Fifteen kilometres down a dirt track deters casual visitors.

Turns out you can camp here. We plan to do so on our way back north. No amenities but an outhouse (delightfully known here as a ‘dunny’).

On the Lasseter Highway. People sometimes mistake their first glimpse of Mount Connor for Ayer’s Rock.

We spend a few days around Ayer’s Rock (or Uluru).

A quote from the Lonely Planet Australia guide:

‘There are some world-famous sights touted as unmissable that
end up being a let-down when you actually see them. And then
there’s Uluru: nothing can really prepare you for the immensity, grandeur, changing colour and stillness of ‘the Rock’. It really is a sight that will sear itself onto your mind.‘

Different sections of the rock have their own characteristics.

We also go to the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) a couple of times.

We do some hiking in the area.

Eventually we pack up and drive a few hundred KMs to King’s Canyon.

These are wave ripples in what used to be the bottom of a sea.

An exciting development – we are offered a heavily discounted helicopter ride. Neither of us have been in a helicopter before.

And off we go.

We spot Matilda in the caravan park. Of course, she’s parked sideways when everyone else parks straight in.

Aboriginal hamlet of Lilla. Population 15.

Nothing like a ride in a helicopter to drive home the vastness and the emptiness of this part of the world.

A Tale of Two Dingoes – Red Centre

At the King’s Canyon caravan park, we notice several signs about dingoes.

There are more signs around the park.

They even have anti-dingo gates in the ablutions blocks.

We think this is slight overkill. We haven’t seen any dingoes in the wild so far.

Imagine our surprise when we leave the car park at King’s Canyon to find a dingo casually loping along beside the road.

The same evening, we see another in our caravan park. It strolls across our path at a distance of three metres – twice – and pays us no attention at all.

This is interesting, because we just downloaded and watched A Cry in the Dark the previous evening.

We leave Queensland for the Northern Territory. First point of interest we come across are the Devil’s Marbles.

While still in Cloncurry, Queensland, we visit John Flynn Place. John Flynn is the man who started the Flying Doctor Service here in 1923.

An interesting sign on the door of the restrooms in the garden.

Also in the garden – noisy flocks of corellas.

Cloncurry is a bustling place – a new zinc mine opened nearby in 2017. The caravan park we stay at is home to scores – maybe hundreds – of workers. There’s an air of dynamism and full employment and money sloshing around.

Bravo, Australia. I get the feeling that if anyone proposes a mine – or any other extractive activity – in Canada these days, people start squealing like their hair’s on fire. Don’t know where they think the money that comes out of the money taps comes from.

Speaking of mines: our next stop down the slab is Mt. Isa.

Mt. Isa’s raison d’être also lies in mining.

We take an underground mine tour. Also underground is this hospital.

After the Japanese bombed Darwin in WWII, people feared metals-rich Mt. Isa could be next. So the hospital built an annex underground, with the help of the local miners.

Both tours are led by local retired miners. Interesting characters, to be sure.

We cross into the Northern Territory and overnight in Barkly Homestead.

Maria wants a photo of a ‘Watch for kangaroos’ sign.

Ever since driving inland, this is the routine: every few hundred kilometres is a roadhouse, with a hotel/shop/caravan park/fuel etc.

In between is a lot of nothing. It’s a good thing we both love empty landscapes. The emptier the better.

This is the telegraph station at Barrow Creek. This is one of a series, some of which are still around.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Northern Territory

An axiom of mine is, ‘Don’t say that you’ll never be in a particular location again that you’ve been to before, however unlikely.’

We come to Three Ways, where the Stuart Highway that goes north-south and joins Adelaide to Darwin meets the highway that stretches east to the coast of Queensland.

This intersection has changed surprisingly little since I spent the better part of a day here 38 years ago while hitch-hiking around Australia.

I spent seven hours here waiting for a lift. I would sit on my rucksack, reading a book. When a vehicle came along – every half-hour or so – I would stand up and try to look non-threatening. I eventually landed a ride all the way to Townsville, if I remember correctly.

How times have changed. ‘…even children get older, and I’m getting older, too.’