Lake Eyre

Saturday 16 June was overcast and a storm threatened. We decided to wait until Sunday for the flight. Geoff unloaded the back seat of their car and took us 150Kms up the Birdsville Track to find Coopers Creek. There was much more water in small lakes by the roadside (due to local rain) but we knew that the track was no longer blocked by the Cooper. Lake Harry (about 10Kms across) was right up next to the Track.

Because the Cooper flood had dispersed we were able to walk around where the track used to go. It looked very green.

You can see the new part of the Track in the middle of the frame behind the small gum tree.

This is a recognised camping area in the "off" season and the kites love the rubbish people leave behind.

It took 3hrs of driving and about an hour exploring so we were "home" at the Maree caravan park quite late.Good excuse for a pub meal.

Sunday dawned clear and cool with a light wind. Feeling we had picked the weather very well we set off for the airfield (10 mins down the road) at the unholy hour of 7:30am.

Talk about small! The plane looked about the same size as the kites we saw yesterday.

The pilot took us over the Birdsville track to the Cooper so we saw again from the air what we had seen yesterday on the ground. It looked dry yesterday. From the air it looked caked. Dry sandy gravel stretched from horizon to horizon. Broken only by a dry creek bed and its attendant trees. The explorers looked for the lines of trees marking creek beds because they could usually find water there if they dug far enough.

The Cooper is interrupted by a natural causeway. The causeway blocks the river in dry times so above it, it is like a river, and below simply a series of billabongs and small puddles. The punt which ferried us across last year is situated above the causeway and remains in the river until it is needed whith the next flood.

Even when it is flooding, Coopers Creek only drains into smaller subsiduary lakes. It seldom reaches Lake Eyre. The smaller lakes simply start to disappear when the dry seasons approach

 We had heard "that it was no longer full", "that you need water to reflect the clouds", "that we should have come last year", and so on. But Lake Eyre was simply stunning> The salt is precipitating mixed with mud. When it is windy the salt and mud form amazing patters.

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And here we are. Still grinning , thrilled to have seen what we had seen.

The tall bloke in the middle is Andy the pilot, our friends are Geoff and Shirley Harvey, but where did the garden gnome come from?

Port Augusta to Marree

On Tuesday 12 June we set off for the North. We had arranged to meet some friends (Shirl and Geoff Harvey) who had been in the area for a few days. We planned to go to Marree with them and fly over the lake together. The rendezvous was the caravan park which is located on the highway just north of the town of Hawker. On the way there we had an SMS from them suggesting we have a look at the ruins of Kanyaka, a station homestead dating from the 19C.

It has rained heavily in this district this year and the growth must be rather like the scene that attracted the family in the first place. Now they are just sad scenes of lost dreams.

While we were in Hawker, after exploring the parts we remembered, Pete went into the diorama to see the extraordinary 360deg painting of Wilpena Pound while Mare looked for a chemist. She was sent on a "short" walk to the hospital (and I can tell you she won't forget her medication again soon) and was rescued by Geoff Harvey. For various reasons associated with the complex regulations surrounding prescriptions we had to go back and visit the hospital twice again and then wait until the items came up from Quorn.

Marree is a real "frontier town" from the wild west. I expected to see John Wayne any minute.

The two-storey building on the right is the pub.

Although it doesn't look like it, a storm blew up that night so we postponed our flight for a day. I will leave you in suspenders for the details of the flight in the next post. :)

Meningie to Port Augusta and places in between

Sorry folks. This will be a longer post than usual. We have had some adventures and were without contact for some time.

We set out from Meningie on a beautiful, cool but sunny Saturday morning the 2 June. We were heading for Port Wakefield on the eastern shore of St Vincent's Gulf a bit north of Adelaide. We went straight to Tailem Bend on the Princes Highway and then on to Murray Bridge. Maggie and I had by now come to terms with how smooth the day would be and so we started up the first of the hillclimbs over the southern Adelaide Hills in a relaxed and positive frame of mind. Suddenly a red light shone from the dashboard and a high pitched whistle broke our peace.  Now we all know that there are elements of Maggie's design that are rather quaint and old fashioned but the old girl has more sensors and alarms than any vehicle that I have driven before. This alarm was labelled "coolant". Sure enough, when I lifted the engine box cover there was a strong smell of antifreeze and green liquid was pouring onto the road. We filled the radiator with drinking water and coasted back down into Murray Bridge. We called into the first service station we saw.
 "Good morning", I smiled (it was the last smile for a good few days), "I have a leaking radiator, do you have a workshop?"
Blank look. "Nup".
"Ah, do you know where I might get some help?"
Incredulous look. "On Saturday?

Well, to cut a long story a bit shorter we parked Maggie in a caravan park and waited until Monday. Then our luck changed. There was one radiator specialist in Murray Bridge. After a lot of sucking air through his teeth and showing me how full his book was he agreed to start that afternoon and we got Maggie back late the next day. Too late to pack that night so another night in the donga. It was a bit better than the donga we used in Darwin all those years ago but not much. Tia DID NOT LIKE THE DONGA. Too well bred I suppose.

Once we got going again we sifted through the suburbs of Adelaide and finished up in the old fishing village of Port Wakefield

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This is where the old fishing boats were pulled up on the shore. They have now built the caravan park with a great view. This was the scene from our bedroom window.

Next day we drove right down to the bottom of the Yorke Peninsula. (If you look at the map we were just where the tinea would be between the big toe and the bunion.) It was a long drive and the roads deteriorated the further south we went. But it was worth it. The southern tip is rugged sand dunes and scrub with lovely little bays. We camped there for the three nights of the long weekend.

We were a little surprised to see an extra rock appear.

A whale-rock!

Very close. Just off the rocks.

When the long weekend was over we moved up to Moonta Bay and had a good dinner at the pub which is the brightly lit building on the shore near the base of the pier.

Now we are parked at Port Augusta. I couldn't resist the scene so typical of this part of the world. Once again from our bedroom window.

Mount Gambier to Meningie

We did the tourist thing in Mount Gambier before we left. The day was a bit foggy early but after lunch the sun came out.
"Sink holes" form in limestone plains when the roof of an underground cave falls in. I expored a few of these in the Nullabor in 1961. Well, Mount Gambier has two of them in the city area. Both have been turned into sunken gardens. The biggest is the Umpherston Sinkhole (named after the family who were pastoralists there when the first attempts at gardening were tried). Photos show that in the late C19 the sinkhole formed a lake (the water table was very high then). By 1930's the floor had dried out and extensive gardening was possible.

The sinkhole is surrounded by delightful gardens featuring Australian native trees.

South Australian magpies have slightly different markings to the Victorian ones. This one is eyeing Tia (who is just out of the picture). Tia thought she could fool this bird by pretending not to notice her and to skip about nearby and THEN jump at her. Needless to say it didn't work and the magpie waited just long enough before slowly moving away. She has obviously met young city-bred dogs before.

We moved on to the Blue Lake, the stand-out attraction at Mount Gambier. The locals said we shouldn't expect it to be too blue at this time of the year but I don't think it was too bad.

That night was cold but the clear sky gave us a lovely travelling day the next day. We set out to drive to Tailem Bend (about 380 K) but decided to slip off to Meningie (still 345K for the day). Meningie is a small rural/holiday town on Lake Albert (which is attached to Lake Alexandrina - the last lake before the sea on the Murray River). Full of water and looking good.

There were some pelicans which kept us amused.

"OH goodness - I AM late home from the pub"



"Hello dear - I met this old chum who WOULDN'T let me get way"

("If I look very contrite maybe she'll let me back!")

"Ah yes! She's a good old stick!"



Melbourne to Mount Gambier

I am sitting in Maggie watching the rain pour down. Mind you, this is not a new experience. It has rained every day since we left home.
If you cast your mind back to last Friday (25th May) you will remember that it rained that day. It rained 30mm in the hour between 12:30 and 1:30 when the day's maximum temperature of 10.5deg was reached. At that time we were on the Geelong Road. Visibility was not too good, the wind was blowing a gale and it was bloody cold.

On Sunday we met the bloke below who forcibly expressed his view of our sanity.

As a matter of interest, did you know that Colac could be quite cold? We decided to spend the first night in Colac and were rather surprised that we needed our new diesel heater quite so soon. We went to the Colac RSL for dinner (I had bangers and mash!!  and Mare had fish and veg). When we come out afterwards everything that was not firmly attached to our bodies froze off and rolled around on the footpath. We turned on the heater as soon as we got back to our spot and then spent a cosy comfortable night. Hooray for Diesel Heaters.

We had a great weekend in Warrnambool with old friends Bernie and Jill Oppermann. They have a very effective wood heater which warms the whole house so we didn't have to pop out to Maggie and turn on the heater to get warm. For those who don't know the house, it is set on the cliffs above the Hopkins River with a view back to the town through the living room window.

On Monday we tootled on to a nice spot near the beach at Portland. There was plent of evidence of the ferocity of the winds over the weekend but it was much calmer and we had a pleasant night.
Today we moved on the Mount Gambier and a powered site so that I could run the computer to write this blog post. Hopefully I will get faster in the future and I will be able to do it on the battery.