Oodnadatta Track - Monday 10th August
Another cool morning, but not nearly as bad as expected. We had a lovely couple of coffees (the joys of power) before packing up, and doing a quick tour of the outdoor museum in front of the pub, including the very old fire truck!
On the road again, and the road had a bit of everything but wasn't too bad. Seventy five kilometres later, we arrived at Coward Springs. Once a rail siding with a pub and a natural spa created after a bore was sunk by farmers in the 1860's, the pub is long gone but the engine driver's cabin and the station master's house have both been restored (the former is now a small museum). The spa has been lined with railway sleepers and is a pleasant 29C! We enjoyed dangling our feet into the water, and followed that up with a visit to the museum which was very interesting, showing the restoration of the two buildings. We ended up spending well over an hour there, and were intrigued to see that the place was for sale as we drove out the gate. When we get service again, we must look up realestate.com.au to see how much it is going for.
Ten kilometres down the Track, we turned off into Wamba Kardarbu Mound Springs Conservation Park. Created by pressure from the Great Artesian Basin, the springs (Bubbler and Blanche Cup) are beautiful to behold. If only we had been allowed to swim there! The Bubbler in particular was lovely and warm, and had very interesting bubbles coming up from the mud! We ended up having lunch at the foot of the Blanche Cup. The rest of the surrounds were spookily white, being on the salt lake plains. It really did look a moonscape.
Back on the Track after lunch, we covered another 60 kilometres before we arrived at Lake Eyre South. At 12m below sea level, Lake Eyre is technically the largest lake in Australia but rarely fills with water. It was looking particularly white today.
Pushing on past that, we started to look for a campsite and ironically, turned off along the Gregory Creek! It was quite windy up on the plains, but after following a little track off the main Track and heading down into the creekbed, we set up camp on the western side of the main embankment. We were so pleased with our remote little spot, protected by trees and with kite nests high above us (we even have some babies in the nest above our van). We got the campfire going in time for percolated coffee for afernoon tea. Some housekeeping necessities taken care of, dinner preparations meant a stew was soon bubbling away on the campfire. Washed down with a lovely 2009 Shiraz, there were again many comments about what the poor people were doing!
The campfire roared into life after dinner, and we enjoyed the warmth of the fire with some music in the background and a whiskey or Baileys. The warming effects of the alcohol had us all singing around the campfire, which was most entertaining! And made us very grateful that we had no neighbours.......
posted by Tracey @ 9:56 pm
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