Tuesday 19th August - Mount Dare

Station dog outside the caravan - more than 5 miles from Gundagai!!

Tuesday 19^th of August

I woke up early as Greg insists on sleeping with the blinds down so he can wake up in the morning, which he eventually does but its some time after dawn and I am waking up at dawn not able to get back to sleep so since this is the first time I have been on a station I decided to get up and put on warm clothes and take some photos of the dawn on this very flat, desolate but amazing country side.

Greg had woken up by the time I had come back so we got travel ready and went on our way.

Back along the corrugated roads saying goodbye with our last view of the painted desert. Back to Oodnadatta.

The Homestead

It was a great sunny day and we were quite hungry so went halves in the legendary Oodnadatta Pink Roadhouse burger – they are quite large so we figured half would do us for lunch since we were only going to be sitting in the car a few hours to Mount Dare.

But oh what we didn’t know!

So yummy hamburger and great chips away, I had a really nice coffee and managed to make Greg one too from his machine – I found a power point – and off we went in the general direction of Mount Dare which is right on the Simpson desert and an hour or so from the Northern Territory border. Because of its location, it’s a mecca for four wheel driver enthusiasts. There is a pub at Mount Dare with a camping facility and accommodation.

 

Massive burger in half was still
enough for a meal!

Pink roadhouse inside

We were about 30km out of Oodnadatta when I spotted on the side of the road a Sturt’s Desert Pea out in flower. This amazing little plant’s flower is bright red with a black middle. We were going too fast to photograph the first one but then I spotted some in the distance so got Greg to stop.

Now I forgot to mention that today was the first day in a long time that Greg has swapped from his normal glasses to contact lenses and so for the whole journey from the Station to Oodnadatta I drove so that he could get used to them. Now it was his turn to drive.

 

Sturt's Desert Peas.

So back to the Sturt’s desert Pea – He said he would stop just after the horses. I was very worried  - before us about 30 meters or so ahead was a wagon being pulled by 2 camels. Like the sight of that was so unexpected. But yep there was a chick talking to these camels and pulling 2 lead ropes that joined their halters. They were plodding along towing what looked like a gypsy caravan, with another camel being lead from behind and a baby camel too. Hastily I took a photo of the flower and then concentrated on the most unusual sight before us. They were waiting for us but then they started coming toward us.

of course you see camels on the way to Mount Dare!

We stopped for a chat. They were raising money for drought victims and were going to all the outback towns gradually making their way to Adelaide. The camels came to a stop right near Gibson and one did the most enormous wee. Thankfully missing our caravan. Evan who was driving is an ex station hand and loves camels, Haylee the young lady leading the camels had a career in special events makeup. Now they have spent many a month on the road and even found the baby camel as an orphan and took him along too. They hope to live in near Adelaide and farm camels for milk or something. We chatted for a while until it was obvious that we all had to get on our way and parted company, not before I gave them a generous donation to their cause. Have to look out for them on the news as channel 7 spent 4 days filming them for a report or something so I hope it gets national not just SA coverage.

the adopted baby who was found wandering all alone

Sexy camels?

The cause - feel free to donate 

We drove down some of the most bone shattering roads, the corrugations were terrible, there were gibber planes full of little stones, red dirt corrugation, white sand, beige sandstone corrugation and now and again a little bit of smooth which was oh so nice, but brief, and it was back to corrugation. Some parts we were only going 10km/hr. This trip was taking much longer than planned. The sun started to dip and we wondered how long it was going to take us to reach the pub.

Oh the choices - where to go!!

Ah!! Pub and Greg had a longing for a cold beer. Not that he can drink beer after his heart attack as he now hates the taste. We struck a deal, he order a beer and I would finish it for him.

Are we there or anywhere..yet?

That’s if we ever got there.

More bumps, we kept swapping drivers every hour as fatigue kicks in with the constant vigilance of the road. You can’t take your eyes off it for a minute as there will be a hole or a big rock to puncture your tyres, or sand that tries to rip the steering wheel out of your hands, then if hitting the sand wasn’t bad enough the caravan slides around so you really have to concentrate and hang on. Hence an hour of picking the best line in the road, sizing up how big corrugations are and trying not to trash car and van is exhausting, especially after 5 hours.

 

Wind donkey - in need of a foot trim
they were like pixie slippers poor thing could hardly walk

Horses doing their best to eat 

Eventually we found the roadhouse. Right before it was a sand pan that almost bogged us. The pub/roadhouse/most welcome sight of all was just there. At the entrance was indicated by an enormous broken windmill, a skinny gate and a levy bank.

 

Mount Dare's broken windmill - such a welcome sight!

We rolled in and it looked like the whole place was shut. Dismay. So I volunteered to hop out and see what the go was.

Turns out that they were not shut at all, just the outdoor lights weren’t on yet. It was 6.15pm. The friendly publican rose from a table of about 8 people all eating dinner. I apologized for interrupting his dinner and mentioned that we would be having dinner and if we could stay the night in the park. He looked with somewhat surprise that we were towing a big van. “You towed that big van here?” he said, to which I replied “Yes, its supposed to be an off roader so we are taking it off road, its supposed to handle these roads so we thought why not.” Then he gave me the instructions to get to the camp site and said he would start cooking our dinner when we came back but not to be too long as the kitchen staff wanted to shut the kitchen.

Fair enough.

After such a big day I could not have thought of anything worse than starting to cook. I had nothing out of the freezer. We had eaten our ‘all else fails pasta and sauce meal’ the night before. Besides we hadn’t talked to anyone much all trip. People were keeping to themselves and these people in the pub looked really friendly.

After a quick set up – the Caz run around the camp and see where we can put Gibson in and so we can get out, we went for dinner. I was dressed elegantly in hiking boots, dusty ¾ hiking pants, no makeup, but I did have a nice jumper. The only clean one left. Greg equally elegant in dusty work boots, really dirty blue jeans and an old t shirt that should have been in the rag bag about 6 months ago, also dusty. What a class act.

It didn’t matter, we were welcomed into the pub. No doubt these people have seen people covered in dust before. Greg bought his beer and I bought a T shirt and finished his beer. We selected a table and then Greg got talking to the barman and I got talking to a lady sitting at the table and then we ended up moving to their table, enjoying a Mount Dare bottle of Red wine, making great friends, sharing stories and having one of the nicest evenings outside the sunset Gin and tonic night yet.

They had a fundraiser going for the Royal Flying Doctor Service. Everyone in the bush fundraises for RFDS. The ladies in Hay knit blankets to raffle, there are sausage sizzles on Saturdays, fetes, race days, you name it. Its such an essential service out in the bush. Anyway for $10 you could have a stubby holder strung on a piece of rope from the ceiling of the bar. There were hundreds of them there already from all over the place – kind of like a stubby holder bunting you might see at a fair if you will. Anyway, Greg hastened back to the van to get a Hash House Harrier Stubby holder with his name on it. We got them in Rutherglen this year when we did the winery crawl and they look really pretty but we have so many and thought it fitting to leave a little bit of hash culture here in the outback. So we paid our $10 and hope they put it up soon.

After our nice meal, decent wine and great company we all decided to call it a night. We had had a great time with Dave and Mel, who own the pub. His parents Tubby and Lola who were visiting from Melbourne to mind the kids while Dave and Mel went to Alice Springs the next day on a shopping trip for the pub.