Lake Eyre Trip, Day 5: Greener than usual

Today, as planned, Group 1 made the trip back to Oodnadatta, leaving at 8.30am, while Group 2 did the flight.

An aside about food

We might be in the remote outback but the food, though not particularly fancy, has generally been well-cooked. The poached eggs at William Creek Hotel were properly cooked – both in technique and level of “doneness”. Marree Hotel’s cook used an egg poacher, but didn’t overcook the eggs so, while they weren’t quite authentic, they were pleasant to eat. The grilled chicken breasts I had at William Creek, and on our second night at Marree Hotel, where it was also specially cooked for me when the three offered options didn’t suit, were on both occasions cooked perfectly – that is, cooked enough but not too much, which can turn it to cardboard. Both hotels had gf bread, and both cooked it in the kitchen understanding the Coeliac’s need for food not to be contaminated by wheat crumbs on a public toaster. (This is not my issue of course, but I was impressed by the awareness and care.) Also at William Creek, and our second Marree night, I was served nicely presented and decent quality fresh fruit for dessert to replace the offered desserts.

Now the track … along the old Ghan line

I couldn’t help being reminded of that little children’s rhyme that starts

Oodnadatta Parramatta
Names that make your tonsils chatter
…

Fortunately, although the track had just been reopened and although it is unsealed all the way, the ride was pretty smooth. Our driver Brian told us his plan was for us to be “like James Bond’s martini, shaken but not stirred”! He also said that although we couldn’t do the Belt Bay side trip, he had plenty of sightseeing options for us. In other words, our day would not be lacking in interest, if he could help it, and it wasn’t.

William Creek, whence we departed, apparently has a permanent population of around 6! It’s in the Tirari Desert, is located on the edge of world’s largest cattle station, Anna Creek Station, and isn’t far from the old Woomera atomic weapons testing ground. William Creek was once a Ghan Stop, when that railway came this way and, or so we read, has one of the world’s most remote pubs (now on SA’s Heritage Register. You don’t have to be beautiful to be heritage after all!) Sadly, it was near here that the young Austrian women Gabriele Grossmüller died in 1998 when trying to walk to it from a broken down 4WD. The Australian outback should never be treated lightly. There is a memorial to her in the grounds.

The landscape along the track is mostly dry gibber plain, though when we saw it, after good rain, there was quite a lot of scattered green scrub.

Here are the main sites we saw:

• A fellow broken down on the side of road! As Brian had seen him the day before, he decided to stop to check that he was OK. He was, but had been waiting, he said, two weeks (so far) for some rear-end parts!
• Beresford Siding, with a dam and flowing bore, was once a rail siding, near an extinct mound spring. There is usually water here, even when the rest of the country is dry. 
• Coward Springs, heritage-listed and our morning tea spot, was once a small settlement. It is now a campground and is up for sale for $1.2million. The “ruins” have been restored, with one building open as an interpretive centre, which we visited. It also has a “natural” spa which was created by a bore sunk in the 1880s. 
• Blanche Cup, a mound spring in the Wamba Kadarbu Mound Springs Conservation Park. “Mound springs” are so called because, unlike springs which lie at ground level, they have a distinctive mound shape. They comprise mineralised water and are created by pressure from the Great Artesian Basin. The height of the mounds varies, with Blanche Cup being around 5 metres high and  25 metres wide. The Oodnadatta Track crosses the traditional lands of three Aboriginal groups and follows the path of ancient Aboriginal trade routes, where traders travelled from one spring to another. The path was well travelled, and knowledge of these springs was passed down through generations of Aboriginal people via ceremonies and dreamtime stories, ensuring survival of the knowledge from ancient times.
• Margaret River crossing. We loved that it was still upstream of the road crossing, and freshly running downstream.
• Curdimurka Siding is the best preserved reminder of the Old Ghan line (along this part of the track at least). There’s a stretch of rail, a fettlers’ cottage (one of many which lie in ruins along the track), a water tower and a water softener tower. Curdimurka is the site for an annual B&S Ball. There is also a cairn for John McDouall Stuart, the explorer who forged the route for the Overland Telegraph Station.
• Lake Eyre South has a small shelter and interpretive station. We stopped here for lunch, and could see the saltpans and some of the water in the lake, a rare site at this southern end of Lake Eyre.
• Mutonia Sculpture Park at Alberrie Creek is an outback sculpture garden created by Robin “Mutoid” Cooke, a former mechanic from Victoria, around 1997. He would visit the park annually to create another work of art from recycled material, and was reported as saying that once there is no more waste he will be out of a job. (We are not sure whether he is still doing this).
• Dog Fence. It runs for 5,000 kms to keep the dingos out, and is still regularly maintained.

Back in Marree

We had a quick afternoon tea by the pool, and then set off to explore the town. It was after 3.30pm and we found that, except for the Visitor Centre, pretty much everything was closed – the Railway Museum, the Lake Eyre Yacht club, and the Photography Exhibition. But we did see the old Afghan mosque and the Tom Kruse exhibit inside the Marree Hotel. As a fan of Tom Kruse and John Heyer’s documentary The Back of Beyond, I enjoyed the display.

Working visa tourists

What would the outback do without these young people? They staff many remote Aussie tourist locations, and are young women, mostly, though we’ve come across the occasional young man too. So, for example at Marree Hotel, we met Canadian, Danish, German, English (Isle of Wight), and Swedish workers. We enjoy talking to them, finding out why they’d come, what they’ve seen and what their plans are.   

Lesson learnt

I learnt a useful lesson this day. As Brian was on his own, without Greg who was with the flying group, we of course rallied to help with food preparation. Tour group member Maureen and I were first off the bus at the first stop, and I asked “Can I help?”, to which Brian didn’t really respond – although what could be done would soon have become obvious. However, Maureen’s direct “Give me a job” did the trick immediately! I know what to say next time.

Quotes of the day

“I never thought I’d be driving through puddles on this trip” (Tour group member)

“I’m getting a little bored” (Man, after sitting for two weeks along the Track with his broken down car, waiting for parts. Clearly not a bush mechanic. Just as well he had a book of big crosswords)

“I know I don’t look Swedish. I’m not blonde, blue-eyed. or tall, but I’m very good at putting Ikea together” (Young Swedish worker at Marree Hotel)

The slideshow … some photos taken in tricky circumstances from the coach so please excuse them!

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and a video of the Blanche Cup mound spring …