Nov 2-4 (Day 276-278) - Birdsville Track and Oodnadatta Track (Birdsville to Marree)

Monday November 2

I went for a morning run, after which we packed up and headed into town for our last provisions - empty the toilet, refill the water tanks, then Mim did some shopping and the Roadhouse and we got some fuel from the $1.72/L shop around the corner (rather than $1.75/L at the Roadhouse). The chap running this fuel station seems to take Covid very seriously - both times I've been in there for fuel the first thing I've seen on opening the door is this stern 70 year old chap behind the counter holding out a bottle of hand sanitiser, complete with hand on top of the pump ready to fire a spurt of 70% Alcohol at anyone who dares walk past him without nuking their hands! Hand Sanitiser Stuart (we'll call him) sent Matt out of the shop because he was eating an icypole! Birdsville can be confident that, if Covid manages to make it in, it won't have been via Stuart's shop!

With everything set, we headed south out of Birdsville and stopped briefly at the Burke and Wills Tree, which is just down and on the other side of the Diamantina River from where we'd been camped. Burke and Wills both stopped by this tree on their ill-fated exploration journey and carved their initials and the year 1860 into the trunk of the tree. Unfortunately the carving appears to have been removed, possibly to prevent vandalism, but it was still amazing to think those two famous chaps stopped here so long ago.

 

We drove on past the Birdsville racecourse and onto the start of the Birdsville Track. It seemed strange to think that this dirt road would be 'it' for the next 400km! 

 

This is it! That dirt bit straight ahead is
the start of the Birdsville Track!

Here's a montage of some of the next two days!

 

 

 

One of the first highlights was crossing the border into SA! We weren't sure what to expect in terms of a police presence, but there was absolutely nothing! No police, no checkpoint, not even a sign saying you need to have completed a border declaration! There were some signs facing towards SA for travellers arriving into QLD, although no police were there either (we'd seen them driving back into Birdsville on our way out). So far only NT Police have had checkpoints set up.

Its condition was pretty good to start with. Easily wide enough for two vehicles to pass, smooth hard surface with small amounts of rock. However we'd been warned by Hand Sanitiser Stuart that some sections were pretty rocky and he said we'd want to slow right down on these, possibly even down to 50-60kph to avoid a sharp rock going through the tyre; so were keeping an eye out for these spots, which turned up eventually! However in most cases the rock didn't last for too long, and all of a sudden you were back onto smooth dirt again.

... but the patches of rock turned up before too long!

So what's it like on the Birdsville Track? Generally it's a reasonably easy drive. In these dry conditions, a 2WD vehicle would get through fine, but the main issue would be the strength of the tyres - road tyres might not be strong enough to withstand the rock on parts of the track. 

The Birdsville Track. Strzelecki Desert on the left,
Simpson Desert on the right.
A pretty easy start to the Birdsville Track...

Through the first part of the track you have the Simpson Desert on the right and the Strzelecki Desert on the left. Both look similar (unsurprisingly, they're not going to change just because they have a different name or live on opposite sides of a 10m dirt track!). The country generally has rolling sandhills in red, pale yellow or a mixture of the two. The ground is a mixture of sand and gibber rock, which means various gibber birds flying around in front of the car from time to time. In some places there are small trees and bushes, with small grasses on the surface. In other places it's pretty barren!

One of the rather flatter parts of the track!

 

 

Stopped for lunch under about the best tree we could find!

It is a fairly lonely stretch of road, however, and while the road's got plenty of variety in terms of its surface and direction, you are always aware there is just so much vast space all around you, and it's not somewhere you'd want to break down! We probably only saw three vehicles between the start of the track around 10:30am and when we stopped for lunch about 1:30. There's not really a lot of shade from large trees so this was about the best we could do - which wasn't much in the middle of the day!

During the afternoon we were passed by a guy in a VS Holden Statesman. We were a bit surprised to see a non-4WD on the track but presumed he knew what he was doing. Well about 20 minutes later we saw the dark shape of a stationary vehicle in the distance, and as we approached we realised it was the same car! He'd blown a front tyre and discovered the wheel brace had been 'borrowed' from his car, and the poor guy was vainly trying to undo the wheel nuts with an adjustable spanner! Paul (as he turned out to be) had been working in Mt Isa and was on his way back to Victoria and figured the Birdsville Track would be the quickest way there. He confessed he wouldn't have taken the track if he'd realised its condition. Although I can't say we were too surprised at the outcome given the speed he was going - he said he was doing 110, which is fine on smooth or corrugated roads, but not on rocky roads!

Thankfully for Paul (as he turned out to be), we had not only a wheel spanner, but a full socket set so we were quickly able to find the right size socket for him, helped him swap in the spare and he was back in business. Of course he had no spare now, so we told him to drive on ahead and we'd follow, and would come across him before long if he had any more trouble.

Paul drove off, intending to stay for the night at Mungerannie Station, which was also our target for the night, but was quickly out of sight. It would seem his desire to reach his destination was stronger than his desire to take it easy on his last tyre! We saw no more of him though.

While the road was pretty dry there were still signs of life. I mentioned the gibber birds earlier which are almost completely camoflagued against the gibber rock around the road and sometimes fly up in a small cloud as you approach. Here and there there was still some standing water which cattle were making the most of!

An emu and her two babies

Cattle enjoying a waterhole before it dries up!

More immensity of the SA outback.

We decided to stop short of Mungerannie Station as time was getting on. Free camping spots were hard to find in this particular part of the track because it was all so wide open. However here and there there were sandhills, and eventually a dune with some low vegetation rose up to one side of the road, and we were able to work our way behind the dune and stay the night on a fairly boring stretch of gibber rock with a sand dune between us and the road, and another one a couple of hundred metres away on our other side. I found one of the plastic liners of the car's wheel arch had taken a hit from a rock and torn a bit so I patched that up, as well as a few things inside the van which needed Bob the Builder to tidy up.

Our stop for the night, just before sunset.

Tuesday November 3

A pretty windy night, not dissimilar to what we had for our first night in Birdsville. I had to head out early to pull the awning in to stop it flapping and the sun was just peeking over the far set of sand dunes at the time!

Desert sunrise

A slippery drive for someone a few weeks ago!

We had our morning coffee, breakfast, did our morning reading and then headed off, leaving the site about 7:30am.

When we first looked at the Birdsville Track, from Darwin I think it was, it was closed due to the rains. While it's dried out nicely now, we could see evidence of just how boggy the track had been when it was wet! This photo isn't the best example, but even that you can imagine how slippery it must have been for tracks to be that deep and all over the track!

 

 

The landscape continued to provide variety. Here were some dark
red -brown hills with almost Uranium-yellow road!

Our first stop was Mungerannie Roadhouse, and disbelief and incredulity struck us as the first sight we saw in the distance as we drove in was the unmistakeable 'Golden Arches' of McDonald's! Of all the places one could expect to find a McDonald's, this would have to be one of the last! Our disbelief turned to hilarity as the little white letters below it became visible - 'Coming Soon!'

Some sharp cookie had also installed a set of traffic lights!

They even had an old Adelaide bus stop!

 

Clearly these people have plenty of time for a joke out here, and what a welcome thing to welcome visitors to their station. Unfortunately things for us went downhill from there. The staff didn't greet us, were sullen and grumpy, and the token coffee we felt we should buy smelt like tobacco and tasted worse. We did at least find out that 'Paul' with the flat tyre had arrived safely last night.

Oasis in the desert! Mungerannie Station

We'd heard about the 'wetlands' at Mungerannie Station so they gave us directions out to these 'a hundred metres that way' and a cocked thumb was the sum total of the advice! Nonetheless it was surprising to see! Flowing water, ducks, bulrushes and all sorts of water vegetation out here in the middle of nowhere! It all comes from their artesian bore which seems to run full-time and has created this incredible micro-climate!

 

Some places, like Mungerannie, have very useful information boards like this with lots of helpful stuff to learn. To be honest, I used to think all this stuff was all a bit of a bore when I was younger! However I've found that reading it and then going to look at whatever it is is very helpful to understand what you're going to see and its significance, otherwise you're just looking at a bunch of trees or a rock or something random.

Did you know this is what the famous 'Coolibah' tree looks like?
Nor did I, but now you do!

 

Ever wanted to know about the great cattle merchant, Sidney Kidman?

They also had a few trucks from Tom Kruse's service. Tom Kruse was a chap who ran a mail service up and down the Birdsville Track, who became known nationally as the result of John Heyer's 1954 film 'The Back of Beyond'.

Clayton Station Spa - not quite what we had in mind!

We drove on. In Birdsville we'd been given a list of places to stop, and Mungerannie was the first on the list. The one which looked the best was Clayton Station which boasted an artesian spa, toilets and showers. It sounded pretty good, so you can perhaps appreciate our disappointment when we found this is all it was - a half rainwater tank with a small amount of water in the bottom, alongside a toilet block still containing a stray set of gentleman's underclothes!

Come on in, the water's great (said the Salmonella to the E.Coli)

The rear view camera on the caravan has been playing up a bit (we have a monitor inside the car and a camera on the back of the caravan so we can see what's sitting behind us), so we stopped to have a look at the cabling. While stopped I discovered the kitchen sink drain hose had come unplugged at the drain end and was dragging on the road, as was the power cable for the inverter, the container for which must have bumped open on the road. It turned out some cable ties around the hoses had snapped, so it didn't take long to put in some new ones from our supplies and we were on our way again.

Not too far out from Marree we passed Lake Harry on the left, which is a smallish salt lake (in Lake Eyre terms that is - it's about 5km wide and 10km long). A hill nearby provided a good viewing location and looked to have a smooth gentle grade up one side so we thought we should be able to get the car and van up it. As we got closer we started to have second thoughts, until we were sure we wouldn't get them up but the car would be fine... until we got closer still and decided actually it was a whole lot steeper than it looked and we'd just climb it instead!

Lake Harry had been playing mental tricks on us, and even though we'd seen plenty of mirages along the road this genuinely looked like it had water in it. We could even see the reflections of the trees on the other side, except when we went over a hill the water seemed to disappear. Exactly like the classic Thompson and Thomson scene from Tintin!

Looking back down to the car from the top of the hill

Looking across Lake Harry - definitely no water there!

From here it was only a short drive until we saw the beloved bitumen road and Marree out to the right.

Marree from the end of the Birdsville Track

We got some fuel, checked out the accommodation options and eventually opted for the free camping area behind the Marree Hotel. It was pretty dusty and dry but it was good enough to do the job. They even let us use the pool which was a bonus, and so welcome after a long couple of days in the saddle!

Wednesday November 4

One reason we came this way was to check out Lake Eyre, which we've never seen before, so Marree was a good spot to do this from, being only 100km or so south-east of Lake Eyre South. The lady at the roadhouse was very chatty and gave us some tips of places to look at, so we left the van out the back of the hotel and headed off.

 

Here's the dirt road again! The start of the Oodnadatta Track

To get to Lake Eyre you have to drive along the Oodnadatta track. This was an unexpected bonus in the sense we'd not expected to travel on any part of this track. On our last trip we'd considered taking this track past Lake Eyre but decided (with our Commodore and road van) to stick to the Stuart Highway, which in view of the general condition was probably the right decision. The Oodnadatta Track was similar to the Birdsville Track in its general appearance and condition.

Typical Oodnadatta Track - wide, fairly smooth dirt with some rock.

 

One of many ruined buildings along the old railway

These days the Ghan railway line from Adelaide to Darwin runs to Alice Springs via Tarcoola, roughly following the Stuart Highway. In years past however it followed the Oodnadatta Track (more on this in the next entry). This meant as we travelled there were many relics of the old line.

The various bridges are a reminder of the many creek crossings
which had to be maintained for this line to function

A water tank north of Marree, for refilling the steam engine's boilers

 

 

The old railway line alignment, with a water outlet for refilling the steam engine boiler

A ruined building in a railway siding near Lake Eyre

 

We drove on for another hour or so before arriving at Lake Eyre South. Lake Eyre is in fact a few different lakes, so we discovered.

 

Arriving at Lake Eyre.

Lake Eyre

Did you know the Great Artesian Basin went all the way up to Cape York Peninsula?

Us at Lake Eyre

This is what the salt looks like up close

A giant salt tree. No not really - the boys got creative and stuck this broken twig into the lake surface!

On the way back we were surprised to see this river bed -
not only full with water, but full with sea gulls!

On our way out to 'The Bubbler'. Pretty dry desolate salty plains!

After we left Lake Eyre, we drove on towards Coward Springs. This also used to be a railway station along the old Ghan line. As we were travelling there we turned off at a sign to 'The Bubbler'. Having read some information at Lake Eyre on the 'mound springs' which provided a trafficable trade route through this harsh environment, we thought it would be worth checking out.

'The Bubbler' is a mound spring, and a mound spring seems to just be as it sounds - an elevated piece of land maybe only a few metres high, in the middle of which is a spring of water. A bit like the crater of a volcano I guess but not nearly so high or sharp as one imagines a volcano.

So why is it called 'The Bubbler'? Well it's artesian water that flows up from underground, but periodically it almost looks like the spring 'burps'! You get some bubbles here and there from the floor of different parts of the spring pretty regularly, but every now and again it does a bit gurgle as though a flood of water has suddenly been released from underneath. Then the escaping water twists and turns as though someone's under there with a hose! It then creates these amazing patterns you see on the bottom of the pool.

Seeing this reminded us of the Jews' superstition at the pool of Beth-Esda, spoken of in John 5v2-4, and we wondered if it was the same cause!

"Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Beth-Esda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent fold, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water" whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."

 

 

The water was drinkable, although a little salty and minerally. Though nothing like the mineral water at Daylesford, Vic we tasted earlier in our trip!

We drove on to Coward Springs which was a small station / tourist place on the old Ghan line. The key attraction was a spring you could swim in, which suited us as it was hot and dusty. Although it was perhaps a little smaller than we'd expected...!

Coward Springs - don't all jump in at once!

Given we hadn't brought any lunch with us (as this was just going to be a quick zap out to check it out!) we turned around and headed back to Marree. There were various 'Dip' signs, which some creative people had graffitti'd into all sorts of funny versions - French Onion Dip, Cheese and Dip, Dip Stick, Diptheria and so on. It was exciting looking forward to the next dip to see what the sign would say!

We got back to Marree mid afternoon and were later treated to this wonderful sunset!

-- Greg