Monday 25th August Old towns, ruins and more

Monday 25^th August 2014

Awoke early with a fuzzy head from too much wine. Silly me. Greg was asleep still so I got dressed and grabbed the Nikon Coolpix camera and went for a walk around town.

Took photos of the old diesel engines, railway line, some buildings, the pub and a few other things like a geeky tourist. Then the Coolpix decided not to work – poor thing has some grit in it somewhere so I returned to camp to find Greg up and showered and good to go. He made coffee and we got semi ready to leave. One thing though, we were running out of food. Especially fresh food.

All the way from Oodnadatta to rest in Marree.
Bet this truck would have a story or two to tell.

There was a general store so Greg wanted to drive there. I suggested we walk as it was only over some bare earth and just past the Camel driver’s memorial.

The romance of the old railway lives on

The general store was great. For such an out of the way place, it had great merchandise. Greg managed to find a hat there – hooray last year’s Christmas present I owed him. They had a limited supply of grocery items and a large upright freezer full of cryovac sealed meats. I bought some chicken and some mince. Found a packet of frozen vegies and underneath something else a packet of frozen stir fry mix. I could not find carrots, there was a lone cauliflour who had seen better days, some apples that weren’t bad and some oranges and lemons  a little old but good enough. Then we found a fresh baked tray of bread rolls so we bought 6. One each for breakfast and 2 each for lunch. Then we found a loaf of bread. Bought some cheese, butter, a few tins of stuff and paid for it all. It came to $120! I expected it to be expensive and $50 of that was Greg’s hat. Most expensive grocery shop ever and I didn’t even buy washing powder or soap products which are usually expensive.

Pleased that for the first time in a week and a half we could have fresh bread for lunch (other than the steak sandwich at the bronco carnival) never mind the price, we there thrilled. Came back to camp and made vegemite and cheese rolls. Gosh they were good.

Then it was on out for us and we were running a bit late but something about these outback towns makes one not want to hurry – like its no big deal so we are getting used to not hurrying and we are enjoying it a lot.

Now it got tricky as there are dirt roads and then tarred roads. You can’t really run your low pressure tyres on the tar for very long as its bad for them and you can’t really run your high pressure tyres on the corrugated dirt as its also bad for them. So we had to pump up our tyres for the 17km of so of tar and then hope that the little bit of dirt that came after that wasn’t too bad or we would have to let them down again only to pump them up again for the trip to Lindhurst to Leigh Creek and then let them down for the road into Arkaroola which we hoped to get to that night. It takes a lot of time to pump them up and let them down and we have 8 tyres to do.

Whilst Greg was playing tyres, I grabbed out the laptop and started trying to get this up to date. There was nothing else I could do as it’s a one person job and we only have one gauge and one compressor. So madly typing while Greg inflated the tyres. It took about half an hour to get it all ready and be on the road again.

Inflation time - back to sealed roads

Greg sporting his new hat hard at pumping up tyres

Ferina was our next stop. Its an abandoned village and there are a number of ruins there.

The road into it is dirt so we travelled very slowly.

This village of ruins is being preserved and conserved and the history researched so there are information boards everywhere which are great but they do get in the way of your photos sometimes. We must have spent over an hour and a half going through the various buildings and taking photos of them until I suggested that it might be a good idea if we move on. We did want to make it out to the cemetery.

 

Ferina - go nuts taking photos country

this is the underground bakery - which still works!

Its hard to believe that this town once thrived

rooms with a view

the corner cupboard is still in place

Memorial to men who went to WW1 and WW2

The cemetery is past the camping ground which is lovely and level and had grass which is very exciting after camping on dirt for such a long time. There was a war memorial there and further on, the cemetery. Unfortunately we would not fit through the gate to go to the cemetery unless we unhitched so decided that since we didn’t really have the time to unhitch and rehitch or walk the 1km to it that we would give it a miss and go look at the war memorial and then get back on the road. We saw the memorial and read the information board and all the names of the fellows that were from the town who went to war.

Then we headed off. Saw some emus grazing by the side of the road. Not particularly worried about cars and vans. Greg took a few photos out of his wound down driver’s side window.

Then back on the road taking care on the dirt part until the bitumen again and then we could go faster to the town of Lindhurst which has only a pub and an aboriginal community centre and not much else, to fuel up.

Hills started replacing endless plains

After the fuel stop it was my turn to drive and the sun was becoming low. It was about 3 in the afternoon. We had a good 50 km of bitumen and after Leigh Creek it was back to dirt. We hoped that the dirt would be freshly graded so we didn’t have to get out and let the tyres again but it was not the best and not worth the risk of damage to car and van so Greg dutifully hopped out and let all 8 tyres down. I discovered that my phone had reception so busied myself texting friends and loved ones who may have thought we had fallen off the earth as they hadn’t heard from us in over a week and a half. Got some lovely replies too. I was chuffed. Then I noticed in my consideration, as it was a a very warm afternoon, I had pulled Gibby up in the shade which happened to be a creek crossing that had been graded at some stage and there were a lot of Choofer sized sticks there for the picking. Choofer size is anything about 5cm or more in diameter and up to a foot long. When the grader went through and when the flood went through it broke up branches into smaller bits and they were everywhere. I busied myself picking up armfuls of them and putting them in the back of the cruiser. I didn’t have to work long before I had a nice load of firewood to take into the National Park where you can’t harvest firewood. Enough for about 3 nights of Choofer campfires. Hooray for me. I got dirty and a skinned a knuckle but felt very useful for a change. After a quick hand wash and a bandaid it was back on the road and project getting to Arkaroola for the night. Its at the most northern end of the Flinder’s Ranges.

nice to see big river gums again

The scenery changed from the flat plains of the desert covered in salt bush or nothing but rocks to undulating hills full of rocks. We saw a couple of wild goats and lots of lizards sunning themselves in the afternoon sun and did my best to avoid running any over – none were run over. Another hooray for me. I towed the van the last 120km to Arkaroola which became a 4WD challenge in some parts, was windy, up and down hills and around some of the most interesting rock formations of hills scattered with hardy straggly trees and native grasses. There were a few homesteads along the way and sheep as well. As we got nearer to Arkaroola and the sun started to set, little wallabies came out and I was afraid of catching one with the car but luckily they saw our aporition coming along the road and scampered. They were little grey wallabies, little tan/red wallabies and coming closer to our destination, the prettiest little rock wallabies with tiger striped tails. We were going so slow as the road was rocky, corrugated and windy that even I could have a good look.

Right on dark we got to the reception and I got Greg to book us in. We got a site with water and power (spoiled now we are). We went to find the caravan park.

It was up quite a steep incline which I almost had to crawl up in first gear - and the sites were very small so Gibson only just fits from drawbar to spare wheel. We leveled up and started to get ready for dinner. Tonight I had left the chicken I bought from Maree – earlier that day  out at lunch time and it had defrosted. Since I did such a splendid job of getting firewood, we decided a camp fire casserole of Moroccan chicken would be the go.

We met some lovely people from Brisbane. Debbie and Bruce. They have a Spinifex caravan which is meant to be one of the better quality off road vans. They have a better water tank system than ours. They have a special drinking water tank and 2 others so you can have wash up water only in one, and I think you can store your grey water as well. After that we all got chatting about the things that have gone wrong in our vans. Three of their draw latches are broken but only one of ours has and they had other things go wrong too which made us feel not so bad about Gibson.

At Maree I went to close the catch in the roof of the shower only to discover that it would not seal properly so Greg climbed up on the spare tyres again and found the whole cover was smashed around the edges, between us – me inside and him out we managed to maneuver it back into position and wind it down so hopefully if we don’t wind it up it will be ok until we can replace it when we go home.

One of my draw catches has smashed and won’t close so now when we set off I simply take the draw out and put it on the bed – to save it jumping around and breaking the draw glides. Just the catch, hopefully, will be easy enough to repair.

Then we have the problem with drinking water. Gibson does not have an independent water tank for anything so what you fill up is what you drink. He does have a purifier and that’s good but the water tastes foul if its bore water Luckily last trip to Lightning ridge where the water was also disgusting, I bought 3 x 4 litre containers of water from the shops and saved the containers – much to Greg’s complaining – however they have been filled and refilled several times whenever we can get decent tasting water. My cuppa tea is awful if the water isn’t nice.

Anyway, Greg had lit the fire for our dinner and now it was my turn to go do something about it. So, starting with washing out our camp oven – which is cast iron and needs a light dressing of oil after every use to stop it from rusting – only on the inside. However you then need to scrub the oil out so you can use it without  a rancid oil taste. I scurried inside to wash out the pot. It wasn’t too bad as I only used it last week. Sometimes if you don’t use it for months on end the oil goes all sticky and you have to burn it off upside down in the fire. However I prepared the pot and the dinner and when the fire had burned down to a cookable level Greg put it on. He is the chief stirrer of the pot (fitting huh) while I go about adding the ingredients and adjusting the flavours. He gets to sit down with a wine while I scurry about. Eventually as a team effort dinner is ready!

It was nice too.

Had another quick chat to our neighbors and then it was time to go indoors. Greg was trashed and went straight to bed and I sat up for a while reading about the old copper mine that is here and still trying to update the blog. Can’t publish still as there is no internet – but there is some up at the reception/bar/restaurant/gift shop/ sundry items store area so might enquire. If I only get the words up without the photos at least people can read what we’ve done. Photos take lots of time. These services can cost a penny too. Greg has had to take a week of leave without pay so we have to watch our pennies from now on.