What better way to celebrate life back on the road than spending a lazy Sunday morning with tea, toast and Insiders. With only 170 klm on the agenda today we mozied through our pack up and headed into town for fuel. The truck stop option appeals because they have showers and bathrooms. Now to me, that says save water, long shower. For Tamika, looking somewhat disconsolate, it meant unknown germs and tinea. So, after a brief, frank discussion we left smelly but mollified and set sail for Lake Hart.
Of course we couldn’t go past Woomera. Only 6klm off the highway, it’s a typical military style town all neat and griddy. There’s a museum and outdoors display, but the launch pad is well hidden. There is a community general store for supplies and probably a lot cheaper than “Spuds†Roadhouse on the highway. At $2.39 a litre, for God’s sake, wait till you get to Glendambo (just up the road figuratively speaking) where we overfilled at $2.09 a litre.
Now for you and I, the term ‘lake’ automatically conjours blue, cool, liquid. In outback South Australia, ‘lake’ is short for ‘was a lake once, but now a ‘ken huge salt pan’. These lakes certainly are a stunning contrast to the red and brown landscape.It was a situation reminiscent of our time in Chile. Just when you thought you had the best possible snow covered mountain peak photo, around the next bend was a better one. So too with our ‘lakes’. The further we travelled, the bigger they got.
But nothing could prepares us for Lake Hart, the second biggest salt lake in the southern hemisphere. It stretched away towards the distant mountain range and impossible to do it justice with just one photo. I spied a group down on the lake and this photo may give you some perspective. Of course, being the weekend, our destinations were commandeered by the footy and bless Telstra’s little cotton socks, there were 5G towers every 25klm on the Ghan railway. But as per Telstra usual, our hopes were dashed the next day as the towers went microwave and our internet went south – bloody Telstra!!
The RV site was plain Jane. Some loon had backed into the shelter, bringing down the guttering and disconnecting the outflow to the concrete water tank. Only the self –sufficient stayed more than half an hour. Speaking of loons, we passed five well-spaced bike riders on the Stuart Highway along the way. Didn’t think much of it at the time, but at 6:30am the next morning the first one arrived, followed by another, and then three more about half an hour after that. These guy’s idea of a fun time is to cycle from Adelaide to Alice Springs with daily temperatures in the mid-thirties. Despite their macho, they were quick to agree that this was less a sightseeing holiday, more a gruelling masochistic challenge.
The next morning, we left just after 8:00am with our eyes set on our first true destination – Coober Pedy.
