The sun rose quickly over the trees at Roxby Downs as we packed up camp and headed into town to join the morning tour. The Olympic Dam mine site is enormous. It’s the world’s largest uranium deposit and the fourth largest deposit of copper and gold. As a sideline, it also mines silver. Unfortunately there were no free samples and we checked – we don’t glow in the dark!
With over 400 kilometres of underground tunnels descending up to a kilometre underground two main shafts and a descending road, the whole place is mind-bogglingly huge and complex. Just the surface acreage is somewhat larger than Belgium.
Our tour took us by bus through just a little of the site where we saw crushed rock emerging at over 90 tonnes a minute to be processed into finished products. Perhaps the most impressive viewpoint was over the new open-cast mine that is being dug. Recently commenced and roughly 4.5 kilometres in diameter, it represents about one eighth of the planned site which eventually will be 1.25 kilometres deep.
Photography was not allowed, so this is the best we could get from a distance. Look carefully and you’ll see a bus.
Our last look at mining was at the tiny opal mining town of Andamooka, We arrived mid morning to find everything shut, apart from the filling station where we had a great coffee and long chat with the lady running the place. She had arrived with her parents in the 1970s when it was about as remote at it was possible to be. After a period of shock-horror, she eventually got to love the place and stayed to live and to raise her family.
We found a room made of bottles that also claimed to be the motel. Upon investigation we found that it was also the post office, opal shop, tourist office, general store and museum. Truly, life is different in the outback.
We’re now all mined out. We’ve seen gold, silver, copper, coal, uranium and opal mining. We even panned for and found a few tiny grains of gold.
We’ve also travelled a lot of miles on tarmac. It was time to set out again on dirt roads. First we retraced our route along the length of the Borefield Road, where we saw no other vehicles along the entire 120 kilometres of dirt, then we turned on to the Oodnadatta Track.
The Oodnadatta Track is actually a very good road. It’s wide, fairly flat and generally has a good surface of sun-baked clay with loose stones. Periodically there are deep loose stones and patches of corrugations, usually on bends and on crests. If you’ve never driven on corrugations, it’s like driving across the ridges of corrugated iron. Anything that isn’t really bolted down is shaken loose by the vibrations. It took the lid off a plastic bottle and part of the cooker fell to pieces. We think Vin Rouge still has the requisite number of nuts and bolts – time will tell.
Our very own dust storm followed us the entire way and it infiltrated its way into everything. It gets into the back of the Land Rover, through the tiniest of gaps in the door seals, into our mouths, ears and eyes. It sticks to anything plastic, the mobile phone, the satnav, the UHF radio and the sun visors. It coated our storage boxes and windows. It stuck to the cooker and the fridge, the box of wine and the washing up bowl. The only solution is a couple of beers at the end of the day to wash it away followed by a shower and to brush out the worst of the stuff from the car. It’s all a part of the great outback experience.
We passed Lake Eyre. Last time we were here in 2011, Lake Eyre and its tributaries had water. Today it’s completely dry. That stuff behind Vin Rouge is not water or snow; it’s the salt crust, all that remains of the lake. When it will next have water is anyone’s guess. For certain it will be years.
Very strangely, in the middle of the salty desert, there’s a chain of fresh water springs. Two of them are accessible and are known as Blanche Cup and The Bubbler. The Bubbler is fascinating to watch. Patterns in the sand change constantly and periodically bubbles of air appear causing ripples on the water.
Although we’d seen them on our last trip two years ago, we stopped off and were immediately besieged by flies. Now the Australian outback fly is not like the housefly. It’s about one quarter the size and a hundred times more persistent in annoyance. It’s also a very social insect. It’s never on its own but hangs out with clouds of others. They seem to have a preference for flying in ones ears, nose and, if open, your mouth. In short, they’re a pest of major proportions. Kill one and another couple of dozen turn up for the funeral. Here’s the back of my shirt.
We gave up trying to wave them away and resorted to donning nets over our hats to keep them off our faces. Even then, the odd one managed to get under the net. Yep, well spotted, I’ve changed my shirt. Wad’ya mean “about time”?
Back on the track we stopped for the night at Coward Springs. This is a delightful little bush camp site. It does have facilities, although of the bush variety. Here’s the showers and DIY hot water facility.
The whole place is constructed of remnants from the old Ghan railway track. Railway sleepers form the structures and telegraph insulators the clothes pegs and door handles. Quirky but quite acceptable. There’s even a spa bubbling up from a bore.
The ‘son et luminaire’ was pretty good too!
Back on the Oodnadatta Track the next morning, we dropped off at William Creek (the photo shows virtually all of it) for a coffee . . . .
. . . . then on again . . . .
. . . . until we reached the ’town’ (don’t take the word too literally) of Oodnadatta. Here we took a lesser track through the Painted Desert. It’s a strange place named after the different coloured sands and hills.
In the middle of the desert, having seen only a couple of other vehicles in the last couple of days, we met up with Leslie in his camper van. We’d been parked next to him on the ferry from Tasmania. Together we watched the sun go down painting the hills in a golden glow, then we went our separate ways, crawling along slowly in the dark to camp at Arckaringa Station.
Next morning we were awakened by the enthusiastic squawking of galahs so made a reasonably early start on the very rough Painted Desert track.
It took us a couple of hours to reach the boundary of the station and another hour to reach the Stuart Highway. Tarmac again after three days of dirt and stones. It seemed like a magic carpet ride.
We camped overnight on the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory - quite literally, on it. I think that Kim slept in one State and I slept in the other.
Next stop Uluru, or as you may know it better, Ayers Rock.
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