home again home again jiggity jig....

so after a biiiiig day (850km) in the car we made it home again! It's good to be home but we are already planning our next trip (Birdsville Track??, Tasmania???, New Zealand??? Leongatha Caravan Park??)

For anyone who is interested here are the stats:

• total kms: 13,207. 
• dearest fuel: 207.9 cents/ litre (Drysdale river station), cheapest fuel: 129.9 cents/ litre (Melbourne)
• total spent on fuel: $2245.33
• days on the road: 42
• thongs lost: 3
• thongs found: 7 (only 2 matched and only 1 was a right foot)
• thongs made: 1
• number of days the made thong lasted: 3 1/2
• number of eggs broken due to rough roads: 0
• number of eggs eaten by crows: 10
• number of eggs dropped on the ground: 2
• crows waking us up by crowing near our tent in the morning: 31863258456
• photos taken: 1303
• number of times Craig said "ooh a lizard, keep walking, I'll catch up": 17
• number of times Belinda was tempted to drive off and leave him there: 18
• money spent on trailer repairs: lost count at $500
• number of grey hairs Craig got due to trailer repairs: 356
• corny fridge magnets bought: 4
• fridge magnets that Craig wouldn't let Belinda buy: 15
• number of times the kids said "I'm hungry" 10 mins after eating breakfast and getting in the car: 84
• times we heard the Despicable Me sountrack: TOO MANY!!!!
• temperature range: 0 to 38
• number of times Belinda cursed her dodgy phone battery: 607
• number of beanies tried on at the Alice Springs Beanie festival: not enough!
• hot springs visited: 1 1/2 (the 2nd one was the size of a bath and about 15 degrees)
• the fortune we made from opal hunting in Coober Pedy: minus $13.50 (cost of the shovel!)

The Oodnadatta Track

The next leg of the trip involved us heading along the Oodnadatta Track which began at Marla on the Stuart Hwy. This track was similar in many ways to the Tanami Rd but with less corrugations. There were many washouts due to a recent patch of rain in the area a week or two before and the road was rutted in parts from where cars had gone through the mud.

The girls absolutely loved the pink roadhouse at Oodnadatta as everything in and around it was bright pink.

You can tell the size of the town by the cinema complex.

From Oodnadatta we did a detour to Coober Pedy as we promised the girls when we went through the town at the start of our trip that we'd go back and look for opals. On the way to Coober Pedy we passed through the Moon Plain, a vast stony desert with hardly anything growing on it. This was where the first Mad Max movies were shot and you wouldn't want to get stuck out here, especially in summer.

Moon Plain

Remnants of a wet past week or so

Coober Pedy (which is aboriginal for 'white man's burrows') is a small town until you realise that half of it is underground. They do this to escape the brutal summer heat which can reach 52°C and most underground houses stay a constant 25°C all year without heaters or aircon. We visited an underground house as part of a tour in an opal mine and it was hard to imagine there's tonnes of dirt above your head.

An underground house.

Opal miners

Down town Coober Pedy

 Next we went 'noodling'. This is where tourists (and locals) can hunt for opals in mounds of dirt which were pushed up by bulldozers in the 1970's as most other areas have a mining lease. We spent a couple of hours here but only found several small and poor quality ones. The girls had fun though.

The noodling fields

We returned to the Oodnadatta Track via William Creek and continued past Lake Eyre which had a bit of water in it from 40mm of rain recently.

Southern end of Lake Eyre. The dark blue is water up to 80cm deep.

It's no joke, they actually do sail on the lake occasionally

A 'Pussy Willow" tree at William Creek. Look closely at whats hanging in the tree.

Metal art on the Oodnadatta Track near Maree. It's definitely a man.

Along the way we called in at Coward Springs where they had a 'hot' spring. They should have called it a 'luke warm spring' as it didn't really warm us up from the cool 15 C day. Down the track further we came to a series of natural mound springs created by warm water reaching the surface from the Artesian Basin.

Mound spring

These springs are the main reason the Oodnadatta Track exists at all and the old Ghan Railway used to run parallel to the road following the series of springs. Even before white man the aboriginies used this route to travel across the area. The old Ghan line still exists but is now derelict including the old stone buildings at each of the sidings.

We finished the Oodnadatta Track at Maree and continued south to the Flinder's Ranges. This dry mountain range is where people from Adelaide like to come to 'rough it' in the great outback as one local told us. We were expecting it to be taller but it was still impressive, especially Wilpena Pound which was created by tectonic plates pushing in different directions to create a 17km wide amphitheatre.

The Razorback lookout

Inside the Wilpena Pound

The start of a cold evening at Wilpena

Sophie sock-hands

We couldn't work out which way the track goes from here. They need better signs!

Native Callitris pine woodland in the Flinders Ranges

The Euro or Common Wallaroo Macropus robustus, a scruffy cousin of the familiar Grey Kangaroo, was seen on almost every rocky hill in the area and we would have seen hundreds, if not thousands of them. (Sophie counted 107).

Euro

Yellow-throated Miner

Wurmbea sp

White-breasted Woodswallows

We camped last night in Wilpena in the centre of the ranges and it dropped below 0 C at night. Brrr. We are now spending the last night of our holiday in a cabin (to save our sanity and our noses from frostbite!) in Renmark on the Murray River.

Alice and beyond....

Like we mentioned in the last blog we had trouble with the trailer where the shock absorber broke and a coil spring almost jumped completely out of it's mount.

Coil spring living on the edge

The coil spring was easy enough to get back in but after searching all over Alice Springs there wasn't the right shock absorber in the whole town! We had to get two sent by air from NSW so we ditched the expensive caravan park and limped the trailer out to the West MacDonnell Ranges where we spent a few days waiting for the parts.

Before we left Alice it rained heavily for a short while and the Todd River briefly filled. The locals and tourists flocked down there as it not often has water in it. Apparently it hailed very heavily a few days before and one local showed me photos of him shovelling thick hail off his roof and it looked like snow.

Todd River flowing in Alice.

We're glad we had the chance to spend so much time in the West Macs (that's local lingo) as there is so much to see. The only problem was the water was extremely cold in the gorges to the point where it feels like it's burning your skin! We did swim though, even with the horrified stares of tourists. We told them we're acclimatising ourselves for our return to Victoria.

Serpentine Gorge at sunset

Ellery's Big Hole. We camped here while waiting for the trailer parts.

The Ochre Pits, a place where aborigines sourced their ochre for ceremonies.

Ormiston Gorge

Simpson's Gap

White-plumed Honeyeater

White-necked Heron

After picking up the shockys and fitting them in the car park of the Alice Springs Beanie Festival (yes, they have a beanie festival!) we all browsed through the selection of beanies on display from all over Australia.

Beanie bandits

So many beanies, so little time!

Next we headed for Kings Canyon, apparently the Grand Canyon of Australia. While it was impressive we only spent a little bit of time here as it was too hot to do the 6km walk around the rim.

Doing their diaries on top of Kings Canyon.

Military Dragon Ctenophorus isolepis

Peaceful Dove

Ayres Rock! The girls had been talking about this from the start of the holiday so they were pretty excited. Belinda had been there 3 times already and Craig 2 times but it is still an awesome sight to see. We decided to do the climb to the top which took just over an hour. The girls did it surprisingly well and everyone was commenting how well they were going, especially Sophie who we suspect may be half mountain goat.

Made it!

 There were a lot of pools of water on top of the rock and in some were Shield Shrimps, a primitive crustacean adapted to living in harsh environments. The eggs are usually spead by sticking to bird's feet.

Shield Shrimp Triops australiensis

A non-touristy view of Uluru

We bush camped not far from Yulara and had our own personal view of Uluru from our tent (albeit the the top of it poking out above the trees).

Emu at Erldunda

Kulgera yobbos

We are now in a small town called Marla on the Stuart Hwy and are about to tackle the Oodnadatta Track. We'll also cut across to Coober Pedy as the girls are excited about hunting for opals, then we'll get back on the Oodnadatta track.

The Boasies