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.