Chasing Horizons #27: Off the Rails – Continuing Down the Track

Off the Rails � Continuing Down the Track

Instead of finishing my tour to Uluru back in Alice Springs 300km to the north with the rest of the group, at Erldunda I transferred onto a bus heading to Adelaide. So back on the Stuart Highway it seemed the natural thing to slip back into pub crawling mode. The Kulgera roadhouse’s claim to fame is that it is the first/last (depending on direction of travel) pub in the Northern Territory. Of course, despite it being barely 11am I had to have a beer before the short ride to the border and entering South Australia.

The majority of people on this new tour were Dutch backpackers. A friendly bunch and because my knowledge of Afrikaans, a language almost the same as Dutch I had the added bonus of me being able to understand most of what was being said. However, we clashed straight away on the choice of music to play on the bus stereo. Their choice of Shania Twain and Robbie Williams did not go down well with Steve, our tour guide, Jenny from Ireland or myself. Whenever we objected and put something a lot less Euro-trashy then the complaints about the loud music made us turn the volume down to inaudible levels.

South Australia is the driest state in the driest country on the driest continent. The Wet doesn’t reach this far south. The track was long and straight, if possible the landscape turned even harsher and drier. The low acacia scrub gave way to arid desert plains with a scattering of grass tufts. Dotted here and there were small bushes. Across the horizon small dusty windstorms could be seen sweeping across the endless plains. As we sped by I noticed the roadside was littered with the corpses of hapless kangaroo roadkill. Now and then we would disturb a wedge-tailed Eagle and the enormous raptor would take to the air. This is Australia’s largest bird of prey and they take advantage of the free feed the road trains had dished up for them.

We stopped for petrol and a bit of lunch at Marla. I realised that I was moving back into civilisation when I picked up a national newspaper. It was full of heart wrenching stories about families and victims in the Bali Terror attack. Travelling in the Red Centre had isolated us from the true horrors of the outside world.

The virtue of travel through such emptiness is that your height of awareness is lifted so that even the smallest slightest distraction is immediately noticed. The SA government, in a fit of ergonomic design, had sealed long stretches of the Track with ochre red asphalt which blended much easier on the eye with the surrounding countryside instead of the normal grey/black.

Four hours of driving southwards the flat plains all of a sudden became dotted with small to medium sized heaps of rubble, like some overgrown mole heaps. We were now entering opal country. However, another diversion presented itself and Steve turned off the Stuart Highway and drove down a dirt track for a few kilometres to the Breakaways Reserve.

It’s hard to imagine that this dry, arid landscape was once part of a huge inland sea. The Breakaways is a very stark area of mesa hills “broken” away from the Stuart Range further north. The hills are of earthy colours set against the moonscape backdrop. Relieved to be out of the confines of the bus we stretched stiff legs and took some photographs. We spent a half an hour driving amongst formations called Salt and Pepper Pots and the Castle. These disorienting and desolate features against the plains of nothing made perfect backdrops for film sets for movies such as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Mad Max III.

We also came upon the Dog Fence. This is the longest fence in the world, at 5300 km (its original length was close to 9000km) it is a wire barrier through SA, Queensland and New South Wales. It was erected to keep dingos from entering the sheep grazing country to the south. Following the Dog Fence, the track eventually joined the Oodnadatta Track and completed a 70km loop along backroads into the opal capital of the world.

Coober Pedy is an Aboriginal world meaning “white man’s burrow”. This is an apt description because more than half the population lives in homes dug out of the ground. The town survives on opals that were discovered here by a teenage boy in 1915. But the mining boom didn’t take off until veterans of the First World War arrived seeking their fortune. Being used to living in trenches it was natural for these hardy prospectors to make their home underground. Originally the dugout homes were simply disused mines. Nowadays the homes are cut specifically as residences. Underground offers shelter from the extreme climate, retaining a constant temperature regardless of the soaring or freezing temperatures outside.

There are literally hundreds of working mines around Coober Pedy, mining within the towns limits was banned some years ago. There are no large corporations here, the small operators prospect by simply sinking a shaft in the ground. When someone makes a strike it’s like bees around a honeypot with dozens of miners homing in to snap up surrounding claims. There are over 250,000 mine shafts in the area marked by a distinctive pile of rubble. Road sign warn visitors to walk carefully and keep your eyes open.

Driving into Coober Pedy I was struck how inhospitable the environment is and the town reflects this. The underground homes set in against dry, stone age looking hills, a sort of mix of Hobbits and the Flintstones. We arrived into the centre of town late in the afternoon at a large bunkhouse dug into the hill at the back of the Umoona Opal Museum. With enough time to take in the museum, I saw displays of early and modern dugout homes as well as old mine tunnels and shafts.

Friday night out on the town wasn’t quite the bright lights of the big cities. We did have good fare at a Greek restaurant called Traces. The proprietor, Jimmy, was quite a character boasting about his exploits as a ex-professional footballer with Palathanikos and how when playing in a European Cup tie against Ajax in Amsterdam he had the choice of beautiful Dutch women but ended up with his nazi-like Greek wife, Thelma. After dinner we moved on to the relatively luxurious Desert Cave Hotel. This hotel has also been carved out underground but in a much more tasteful style, the roughly hewn walls had been sealed and painted, high ceilings and tiled floors with lots of chrome and lights. Coober Pedy is a friendly enough place but the locals have a reputation for becoming volatile. It certainly showed with old men with tight denim shorts and greasy hair inviting female backpackers to come and see their dugouts. Even the youngsters presented themselves as unsociable, wearing grungy out-of-date fashions.

A comfortable night’s sleep was had in our dark and quiet underground bunkhouse. On Saturday we were able to sleep in to 7:30am before being transported to the Jeweller’s Shop Opal Field. A miner trying out his new bulldozer bulldozed these mounds of rubble here. He stuck opal and within months every Tom, Dick and Harry was bulldozing the earth in the hope of successive finds. The whole area is now mullock or waste dumps. Opal shrouds and splinters can still be found in the sandy stones. We were left to fossick or “noodle” through the mullock for over half an hour. Finding nothing and getting very dusty I soon tired of the noodling but one or two of our group found some white silica stones with coloured speck.

Leaving Coober Pedy the bus again turned south onto the Stuart Highway and soon the heaps of mine rubble disappeared and were again replaced by the inhospitable Simpson Desert. Simmering mirages gave the impression of large bodies of water out on the horizon. As boredom set in I became concerned about some of the road signs designed to make motorists think twice about continuing their journeys whilst feeling fatigued. “Survive This Drive”, “Better Late Than Dead On Time – Rest Now”. Steve tried to pull the wool over the gullible Dutch travellers, explaining how windmills are fans to cool cattle. Or how microwave antenna masts are actually speakers that play classical music that pacify cattle and best of all that the solar powered repeater stations along the roadside are actually warm showers for truckers and motorists. At a roadhouse stop I spotted a sign behind the unfeasibly long bar;

What a sense of humour.

Then we came to Woomera. A woomera is an aboriginal term for a traditional wooden spear launcher. After World War II, Britain required a site for testing new weapon systems. This vast and virtually unpopulated land 500km from Adelaide on the edge of the Simpson Desert controversially became Australia’s primary test site for nuclear weapons testing, satellite launches and tracking of lunar and planetary spacecraft. Although a prohibited area, the place thrived during the 50’s and 60’s with government and US military personnel. Testing is still done on a very limited scale and the US base closed in 2001. Woomera is now an “open town” but just a shadow of its former self.

We drove through the immaculately kept streets lined with young tree saplings and manicured flower beds lined with bark chippings and perfectly paved footpaths. The place smacked of government money. It was bizarre. We stopped briefly at the Heritage Centre and the Rocket Park in the middle of town to gaze on the collection of old military aircraft, rockets and missiles. In 1999, a decision was made by the Australian Federal Government to house many of the illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, many arriving by boat, at a facility near Woomera Village. We unsuccessfully poked around looking for the infamous centre, which has been so much in the news recently. It was like the place didn’t exist.

At last in the gateway town of Port Augusta the outback abruptly ended and the Stuart Highway turned into the Princes Highway. We drove through the large industrial town, catching glimpses of the Spencer Gulf that crawls up between the Eyre and Yorke Peninsulas. I had reached the southern coast of Australia again but the journey further south to Adelaide would have to wait for one more day because we left for the southern Flinders Range which loomed up in the north-east.

We drove up through the pretty Pichi Richi pass into rolling hills and low mountains. We were in much greener land now with woodland and fields where emus grazed. Brightly coloured corelas and galahs took to the air as we sped past. A quick, stark change in contrast from the endless outback desert we were in a few minutes ago.

So with dusk falling we arrived in Quorn. This was an important town on the Great Northern Railway and certainly retained the atmosphere from its pioneering days. We checked into the Andu Lodge, an old hospital, which has been converted into a spacious hostel. The friendly owners had laid on an excellent BBQ dinner which we devoured sitting around a warm outside fire. There was not much in the way of things to do on a Saturday night but Irish Jenny and I managed to crawl through the town’s hotel pubs. In the Intercontinental, the local cricket team and their families were celebrating the team’s win that day over a rival village. In the Austral, two drunken barmaids were lamenting their lot and complaining about the lazy proprietor sleeping upstairs. The proceeded to drink their way through the bar’s well-stocked liqueurs. Unfortunately, the Criterion was holding a “Thunder Stuck” party the following Saturday, but as we would be missing the event kindly played us the entire AC/DC video collection at full volume. Finally we got into the Grand Junction Hotel just before closing where we were locked in and chatted with the kindly owner and his wife while being plied with free drinks.

With heavy heads the next morning our tour proceeded into the Rolling Flinders Range. We were deep into a productive wheat and sheep farming region. At a small town called Willmington (pop. 250) we turned into the Mount Remarkable National Park. Now the unsealed track rose into the hills heavily wooded with gum trees. The rugged landscape was profuse with wildlife – spotted were shingle lizard and lace monitor, red kangaroos and crimson rosellas. The views from high in the hills to the Spencer Gulf far below were magnificent. At the top of the hills a car park signalled the start of the Alligator Gorge. Now we had to walk down 250+ steps onto a wooded gully to follow a path at the bottom where a long dry creek once flowed. This colourful gorge was dominated by high cliff sides and burnt out eucalypt trees. By the end of the two-kilometre walk it was hard to believe that only one year ago the water had flowed knee deep through the gorge, another sign of the water shortage problems being experienced all over Australia at this time.

Our journey continued, small farming towns rolled by as the mileage ticked off the signboards as we made our way to Adelaide. Melrose – Laura – Yacka – Georgetown – Wirrabara. Leaving the Flinders Range we crossed the imaginary Goyder’s Line to split the wetter fertile farms in SA from the drier areas more north.

Now the rolling hills were covered with barley and canola fields. We came into the wine-growing region of the Clare valley. Now we had chance to visit some wineries and taste some of the local tipple. The wines were all good and the estates picturesque, which reminded me of the wine farms we have back home in the Western Cape, South Africa. Particularly impressive was the oldest winery in the region, Sevenhills, established by Jesuits settlers to make ceremonial wines, the grand church’s spireless steeple was immediately recognisable as being incomplete.

With the taste of wine well and truly on our palettes we were disappointed to arrive at the Australia’s most famous wine growing region, the Barossa Valley, after all the wineries had closed at 5pm. So we headed straight onto Adelaide on the Sturt (not be confused with Stuart) Highway. As we approached the Adelaide environs the freeway became 4-lanes and the traffic increased. Soon we were driving through the trendy suburb of North Adelaide and over the Torrens River into Adelaide itself.

So after nearly a month and over 3000km of travel, from Darwin and the Timor Sea in the north I had made it from top to bottom of Australia through the Red Centre to Adelaide in South Australia. What a ride.

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