End of the Voyage Extraordinaire

"To conclude, I may say that our journey into the interior of the earth created an enormous sensation throughout the civilized world. It was translated and printed in many languages. All the leading journals published extracts from it, which were commentated, discussed, attacked, and supported with equal animation by those who believed in its episodes, and by those who were utterly incredulous."

Ok, so that last quote may have been over the top, but we did have a great holiday. The last few days was mostly driving. We managed to see the confluence of the Murray and Darling at Wentworth and stay right on the Murray at Euston before a night inWest Wylong and somehow fitting Alison's mother and her dog and luggage into our poor old overburdened car ( Big Red Ralphie ).

Some stats :

7265 Km

 1198 lires of petrol consumed.July 2012 was the coldest in Cenrtral Australia since the 70's.

Clare Valley

"Suddenly, just as I had consumed the last apple and drunk the last glass of wine, a terrible voice was heard at no great distance."

From the Flinders we proceeded down to Clare for a few nights before we start the trek home. The Clare Valley seems very green  after our trip to the centre. We hired bikes and did a 20Km ride on the Riesling trail on a fine but wintry day. All was going well till we stopped and tried a very nice Muscat after which we all felt like a nice little nap in front of the fire but we pushed on and had a very excellent lunch moment at a winery and tasted more fine Rieslings before cycling home. On the way we met some cyclists we had seen on the Stuart highway. They had ridden overland from France to Singapore then flown to Darwin and ridden from there. Suddenly my 20km with stops to try wine and eat lunch did not seem such an achievement.

The Flinders Ranges

"That is Sneffels—a mountain about five thousand feet in height, one of the most remarkable in the whole island, and certainly doomed to be the most celebrated in the world, for through its crater we shall reach the centre of the earth."

We proceeded on to the Flinders Ranges. Our days had turned grey, leeching most of the colour out of the ranges. We managed some good walks into the pound, along a Red Gum lined gorge, and up to an aboriginal rock painting site. We had a paid sunset tour where we shivered on a windswept exposed site drinking sparkling shiraz and eating Kangaroo while spotting Euros and big reds.

The Track Continues

" I discovered a spring of fresh water, in which we voluptuously laved our faces, hands, and feet."

We left Coward springs and visited the natural mound springs. These were like nothing I have ever seen, weird mounds in the desert with little verdant patches at the top surrounded by salt plains dissected by streams from the springs. We proceeded on to Lake Eyre South where we could see a sliver of water way off the shore. From there we want on via Curdimurka and had fun exploring an old Ghan station and railway bridge, Jen did some surface surveying archaeology there.
We stayed the night at Farina ruins. Farina ( Latin for Flour ) had great  plans in the 1800s to be a major area for wheat growing. Unfortunately they made these plans in a particularly wet year and never managed to grow wheat. The campsite was wonderful we shared a campfire with a  generous older couple who regaled us with tales of the Birdsville track but unfortunately interspersed these with blatantly racist comments.
Would have been fun to have our leftist rainbow warriors and right wing grey nomads at the same camp.

The Track

"That same day he deposited in the archives of the town the document he had found written by Saknussemm, and he expressed his great regret that circumstances, stronger than his will, did not allow him to follow the Icelandic traveler's track into the very centre of the earth. He was modest in his glory, but his reputation only increased."

Our rainbow warriors at the campsite shared with us the important info that Oodnadatta was out of unleaded. So instead of going there we took back roads via Mt Barry and the moon plains back through Coober Pedy. This allowed Alison to fulfill her lifelong dream to see the Dog Fence. Somewhere on this dirt my Anderson Plug worked its way out  dragged on the ground and was destroyed. Luckily an old Auto Electrician codger in a shed at Coober Pedy fixed it so I did not need to try out my very poor soldering skills. We then went on through William Creek ( after a required beer at the pub )  and stayed the night at Coward Springs.
Coward Springs was a delightful campsite at an oasis in the desert caused by a broken bore that spills out water.

Painted Desert

"All this while we were advancing at a rapid pace. The country we had reached was already nearly a desert. Here and there could be seen an isolated farm, some solitary bur, or Icelandic house, built of wood, earth, fragments of lava—looking like beggars on the highway of life. These wretched and miserable huts excited in us such pity that we felt half disposed to leave alms at every door."

We recovered Jen's bag and proceeded down the Stuart. We spent the night at Marla before setting out for the painted desert. We stayed on an isolated cattle station, Arckaringa Station . We had a bit of dirt to camp on, a tin shed with a toilet and shower, and a large nicely set out communal camp fire. We  bumped up the road to the painted desert which is a piece of spectacular bad-lands. We set up chairs and had a beer overlooking the plains at sunset with no-one for miles, magic. We came back and settled next to the camp-fire. You meet many different people around camp-fires. We met an interesting young photographer who had some personnel mission to go and photograph all the landscape affected by the nuclear tests at Maralinga. He had his Kiwi mum with him who plainly had had enough of outback living. Then another couple joined the fire who had just come up from the Roxby Down protests. They had firmly held beliefs and some concerning information about the Olympic dam mine, but interspersed it with too many conspiracy theories for our liking.

Alice

"Stapi is a town consisting of thirty huts, built on a large plain of lava, exposed to the rays of the sun, reflected from the volcano."

Alice Springs was supposed to be a one night stay where we recharged our depleted stores did our washing, bought a tent pole and did some shopping. We achieved all this together with a swanky dinner, so we felt pretty good. The next day we rocked up to the airport to perform a daughter exchange. Our eldest arrived, but her bag did not. We sent off our younger daughters, who had become an awesome camping team  to fly home. Alison held up a few hundred people trying to check in until the Qantas representative agreed to pay for another night's accommodation in town as locating us somewhere along the Oodnadatta track to deliver her bag when it arrived did not seem to appeal to them.