The Oodnadatta +

Date of Adventure 18 December 2024

This Track, The Oodnadatta, seemed fairly risky when I read about it online and watched a couple of videos. In fact when I got started on it, it was trivial. I think that a week before I drove it, it would have been muddy and really tough but it had dried out and was just hot.

It’s the dirt track that got me from William Creek to Coward Springs and after leaving Coward Springs I drove it to Marree. It was in good enough shape that I didn’t even use 4WD though maybe a bit of the driving would have been somewhat easier had I done so. Along the track there are a number of abandoned buildings and sites. Most of them are relics from the old Ghan Railway. The trains ran on a narrow gauge track up until about 1980. There is a new Ghan rail train that is basically a tourist train (read expensive) on a new track from Adelaide to Darwin. The Old Ghan ran from Marree to Alice Springs. And it’s the relics of the Old Ghan that are found along the Oodnadatta Track. Some pictures were in the earlier post about Coober Pedy to Marree. But here are a few that might not have been seen.

Further along I came close to the southern end of Lake Eyre.

But the real shocker was a crazy sculpture garden along the side of the track at Alberrie Creek. The first thing I saw was this crazy upside down car but it was next to a home and I would have had to go through a gate and up a half kilometre driveway to get close to it.

Then on the other side of the road, a bit further down, I came upon the rest of the sculptures.

This will just be a bunch of pictures that I took as I walked around.

But the pièce de resistance were the two airplanes buried, tail down. Birds had nested in the cockpit of one and they flew out as I approached. I didn’t get a good look at them but I think they were fair sized raptors. There were a few cockatoos flying around as well and a couple of them landed on the nose of one of the planes.

This was a complete surprise to me but when I checked my maps more closely it’s indicated on the better maps.

That’s the end of that story.

Coward Springs

Date of Adventure 16 - 18 December 2024

I’ll say a few words about this campground and post some pictures. It might be the best campground I’ve stayed in so far. The only other campground that compares is Loyalty Beach at the tip of Cape York. And both of these were especially good because they were empty…off season.

Coward Springs is on the Oodnadatta Track. It’s an oasis in the middle of some of the most desolate country I’ve seen. When I contacted them about “reservations”, Scott said that they hadn’t had any guests in a while so no problem, just let them know and show up. That’s what I did. They have a self check in system and I found a reasonable campsite. There was no one else around. I ran into Scott a little later in the afternoon and he explained a few things.

It’s a former railroad station and is heritage listed. There are a bunch of old railroad relics and a small but interesting museum about the area and the railroad.

One of the reasons that they built the station in the first place is that it has an interesting spring. The water comes out at pretty high pressure so they’ve piped it into a “spa”. There are a couple of “jets” in the spa.

The daytime temperature was pretty hot when I was there. About 40 or 41 degrees in early afternoon. But the water in the spa is nice and cool and really refreshing.

They let the water (after the spa) run into some channels, resulting in a wetlands that is more or less controlled.

They have also used some of the old railway timbers to build several structures, including toilets, showers, and a date shak. And there are other remnants of the old railway station around the grounds.

As I noted, they have a date shak because they are a pretty active date farm. It’s interesting that they have a few different kinds of date palms, some tall and some pretty short.

I originally thought I’d spend 2 nights but it was very relaxing so I decided to spend a third. The only problem was that on the third day as I walked into my campsite there was a brown snake there. It kind of crawled away. I tried stomping my feet (from a distance) to scare it back into the bushes. Well, it crawled under the Troopy, through one of the wheels and up on the suspension of my car. Needless to say I didn’t stick my head under there to see where it went. I just closed the Troopy up tight and stayed away from the area where I thought it might be. I never saw it leave but when I talked to Scott later in the day he said that they occasionally see them, not usually many at this time of year, and they just kind of disappear into the bush so it probably left shortly after I saw it. You can look it up – Western Brown Snake – one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. They are really different from the American vipers in that they have really tiny teeth. And everyone has told me that they really avoid people if at all possible. But it’s not something I’m going to mess with. I suppose I’ll see more of them before the trip is over.

Coober Pedy to Marree

Date of Adventure 14 - 18 December 2024

Nothing much to say about the drive from Uluru to Coober Pedy. I did a free camping overnight on the way and since most of the interesting places to camp in Coober Pedy are closed for the season I just went ahead and stayed at one of the caravan parks. Not cheap but they have a pool and it was OK. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town and very weird. Fifteen to twenty km out of town you start seeing these dirt piles. As you get closer to town they get denser.

There were a variety of different kinds of diggers and excavators. Here’s one that was parked in town.

The town is pretty small. I expected something larger because it’s the biggest town in the general area. Apparently there are times when they have a drive in theater open but during the summer they apparently roll up the screen. The temperature was running about 40 when I was there.

Sometime in the past people started building underground homes. I suppose to get out of the heat. And now there’s lots of stuff in tunnels and caves…Opal shops, motels, even a café.

I did a little grocery shopping because I was pretty uncertain when I’d next find a grocery store. But only spent one night and then on the road, heading south. It was an interesting drive because a few days earlier the road from Coober Pedy to the William Creek hotel was in bad enough shape that they were limiting traffic. I’m sure that was due to the rains the week before. When I drove it, it wasn’t bad. There were only 3 places where I had to be careful and I didn’t even really drop my tire pressure. Just a reasonably good gravel road.

William Creek is just a (temporarily closed) hotel, a few houses and a landing strip for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It’s amazing but there is a service in Australia where they fly medical people to remote places when needed. I keep seeing places to make donations and have dropped a few coins in the slots. Other than that, I’m not sure exactly what their support is.

I made a couple of stops that day…the only one worth mentioning is Strangways Springs. This was a town on the telegraph way. There were a lot of repeater stations along the north-south telegraph line through central Australia. I’ve been to some that were well maintained but this one is an interesting ruin.

There were a number of buildings and the site was also used as a “cattle station” center so there were buildings for the people working the cattle and sheep. In the third and fifth picture you can see one of the telegraph poles. Pretty simple poles!!

This station was built at one of the active mound springs in the area. There are hundreds of them as you drive down the Oodnadatta Track. The ones at Strangways are all dry but some are still flowing.

They are mounds because of the buildup of minerals over many centuries and the blowing dust that caught in the damp earth. I didn’t stop and any active ones and now regret it. The Oodnadatta Track along hundreds of kilometers was a travelled route even before the white man came. People could travel here because of the access to water.

I spent 3 nights at Coward Springs. It’s a great campground and there will be a separate blog about it.

On 17 December I started southward again. The drive from Coward Springs to Marree has a number of interesting ruins of telegraph stations, train sidings, and general ranch buildings. I only stopped at a couple. Here are pictures of the ruins at the Curdimurka railway siding. It’s still relatively intact. The railroad that ran through here – north/south – was the Ghan Railway and there are lots of places with explanations of the importance and difficulties of maintaining it. I don’t know why it’s no longer used…probably because goods are now transported in the road trains that drive up and down Australia Route A87 from Port Augusta to Darwin.

The other amazing sight along this track is a pretty good view of the south end of Lake Eyre. This lake, or lakes, are the drainage from a huge amount of the Australian continent. At the southern end, during dry times it’s a kind of salt flat. It’s almost impossible to reproduce the scale and impressiveness of this salt flat in photos. I hope that you can see the scale in the panorama in the first picture and if not, the second one might give you some guess about the way it looks.

I drove on and spent the night camped behind the Marree Hotel. Not much to say about it. It’s a lot like so many of the outback hotels. Still a bit of the olden days left in some of the interior rooms and a pub that’s pretty empty this time of year.

Stay tuned for a couple more posts about stuff along the Oodnadatta Track. Now that I’ve driven the southern section I feel like I should have picked up the track in Alice and driven the whole thing. Well, timing and other goals just got in the way. There’s no way I’m going to see all of the interesting parts of Australia in one year.