Journey to the Centre of the Earth

The fridge and boxes were bolted in and strapped down, rear seats removed, 30 litres of water put in 10 litre containers sitting under a 5 ply floor, another 30 litres behind the cargo barrier, 10 litres of oil. A dozen bottles of wine (you must keep your fluids up!). The whole thing weighing a lot more than I would like and sitting down at the back, nose in the air a bit despite the heavy duty springs. In fact the Disco felt very heavy and handled a like a boat in a big swell.

Leaving Sydney we headed out across NSW. Victoria and South Australia, then straight up the Stuart having a quick look at Woomera on the way.

The outback began to feel like the Outback from Coober Pedy onwards. What a great wild west town. We splurged on accommodation there because we knew we would be camping from the rock to Alice. The Desert Cave was a pretty flash pub. The world's only 5 star underground hotel is their boast We took a look at the breakaways (right), an eroded part of the Stuart range, rugged and brightly coloured in a range from white to red, ochre and chocolate. great place for a science fiction movie. In fact they were shooting one there. "Pitch Black" to be released in 1999. We had a look at some of the location sets before being told not to take photos by a security guard. Saw an underground house owned by Crocodile Harry. An old guy who hunted crocs in the '50's before he settled in Coober Pedy to become the local eccentric. Every surface of the cave. (house) is covered with parts of Harry's life. It became apparent after reading one of the news paper articles plastered to the wall that Harry does not need viagra. According to the article he was hunting virgins. Yep. Virgins, although he said "I'm not really that fussy" in one corner were pairs of lacy knickers hung up. Trophies?

The Rock and the Olgas are amazing. You have to be there to appreciate them. Photographs don't do them justice. Our favourite though was the Olgas. The combination of red rounded shapes, bright blue sky and the valley floors sprinkled with fluorescent white ghost gums is stunning and unique.

Kings Canyon was equally spectacular, despite having to share it with several bus loads of people. In fact the Centre was crawling with Europeans - Germans, French and Italians, not a very friendly lot though. Hey who cares? bring in those Deutchmarks, Francs and Lire Every evening at dusk the wild flowers would begin to smell of the most fabulous fragrance. The whole camping area was surrounded by fields of flowers that had sprung up after all the rain they had had only a week before. We were fortunate to see this many. We were told they were the best they had been since 1993.

Left Kings Canyon and headed west on the Mereenie Loop, a good dirt road that goes through Aboriginal land, looping west, then finally East again to Palm Valley. Wildflowers lined the road. Like driving through the world's biggest garden. As you drive into Palm Valley the road steadily deteriorates from a rough track to a rocky river bed and finally to just a series of rock ledges. As you lurch your way down to the car park to the valley itself, the track becomes quite slow. Unless of course you're in a hire 4WD, in which case you can just bounce from one rock to another as fast as possible! We walked up the the creek the next day amongst the palms which are rare and only occur in 2 places in the world. Lawn Hill National Park in Queensland and Palm Valley. They look remarkablly like coastal Cabbage tree palms except the new growth on the smaller trees have a red tinge to them. Very prehistoric looking. You expect to see a dinosaur rear out from behind one of the big red rocks. The camp sites were all cabled off by the National Parks so we had trouble getting the Land Rover close enough to the tent to use the flouro camping light. We bought an extension lead in Alice Springs to fix this problem in the future. None the less, at the time it meant we couldn't get the tent down onto a flat area, so we were less than happy with our camp and only stayed 2 nights instead of the 3 we had planned.

On the way to Alice Springs we had lunch and a quick look around Hermansburg Mission, where Albert Namijirra was born. It took the original Lutheran missionaries 20 months by camel and bullock to get there from Port Augusta in the 19th century. Imagine almost 2 years of travelling to go 1100 odd Kms! As you drive into Alice Springs the West McDonnell Ranges start to appear all around you. Alice itself is in the flood plain of the normally Dry Todd river surrounded by the ranges. It's a very dramatic location for a city. We stayed at the Desert Palms just the other side of the Todd from the main part of town. A sort of up market motel with separate little cabins done in an out of keeping Polynesian style, kind of "Fiji meets the Outback". Weird. We spent our extra day in Alice just wandering around and getting our bearings and taking a look at all the shops and galleries in Todd street mall. I think some of these so called galleries are souvenir stalls ripping off the Aboriginal art style.

In the middle of our time in Alice Springs we drove out to Ruby Gap in the East McDonnells and put up our first bush camp. It was a bit of a challenge getting in there, you have to drive up a river bed. It's isolated, so you're asked to register with the ranger on the way in and let them know when you leave, otherwise they come looking for you. As we were crossing the soft sandy bed of the Hale river the Disco popped out of low range into neutral. This is not an endearing flaw. It's happened before at just the wrong moment. The advice I'd received in Arltunga was "what ever you do don't stop in the middle of the Hale, or that's where you'll stay!" I broke into a cold sweat. The Discovery was rolling to a halt, right in the middle. This was embarrassing, there were a couple in a brand new Prado up ahead who'd just sailed straight through. They'd only had the car 3 months! I eased it back into low just before coming to a complete halt and continued on up the river at a steady grind, hoping the little beast wouldn't let me down at the next sticky spot.

The trip back South the slow way through the Simpson, as full of rocky plains, sand dunes, wildflowers and another eccentric - Molly Clarke at Old Andado Station. A stroppy old bugger, not surprising I guess. She was recovering from a hip operation and she must have been in some pain. I think she's sick of doing the tourist thing after 20 years on her own in the desert. The house she lives in was built by the original owners, the McDill brothers in 1924. It is a real piece of living history. The McDill brothers spent 12 years living in the open with their stock before they built Old Andado and it's still standing. This is not a grand structure, it's basically made from bits of Coolabah trees and tin, roof, walls and internal walls too. It must be amazingly hot in the summer. It was 31 degrees centigrade when we were there and that was winter! She had some pretty firm beliefs... Journalists, "A bunch of liars", City folk, "Too bloody fussy".

We intended to camp at Dalhousie Springs for 3 nights, but depite its fame and the lure of the springs we decided it wasn't the spot to spend heaps of time so we went on past the old Dalhousie ruins (below), which look great surrounded by Date Palms and found a spot near a dry creek bed with some large Mulgas and Collabahs growing by it. One vehicle went past the whole time we were there. one more than I expected really. Everybody driving out there is very friendly, they all want a chat and to swap information about the condition of the track.

Dalhousie Ruins.

Eyre Track.

The drive down the unmaintained Perdirka track to Hamilton was slow, but really enjoyable. Fields of flowers as far you can see. Flocks of bright green budgerigars. A lone camel and trees full of red tailed black cockatoos. We got to Ooodnadatta the next day and camped behind the Pink Road House. That night around the campfire we met the location manager who was working on "Pitch Black" the movie being shot at Coober Pedy. He was out looking for more weird landscapes around Lake Eyre. As we were talking, a police van kept driving through the camping area (more like a junk yard!) finally he stopped to talk. During the course of conversation he told us that Oodnadatta was the most violent town in South Australia! We were the only people in the area, so we all looked highly nervous until he explained the violence only occurred among the local people. We were quite safe because we were outsiders. Whew!

Curdimurka Halt.	Coward Hot Springs.
Mound Spring	Blinman

On the home run down the Oodnadatta track we followed the old Ghan train line. Lots of ruined fettlers cottages, rail bridges and abondoned sidings, all quite spooky in the empty blasted landscape of brilliant white clay and plains of black gravel. Our camp at Coward Springs under the Date palms and Tamarisk trees was to be our last. I had a dip in the little spa that had natural warm water boiling around in it. The sides made of old Ghan sleepers and a wetland with reeds surrounding it.

We met a couple from Perth in an old Land Rover series 2 at one of the mound springs (above) on the track. These people must have been pretty keen travellers, they'd been to the Land Rover 50th anniversary in Cooma and then back to Perth. Then back east again across the Tanami, down the Oodnadatta track, were we met them. Then on up to Birdsville for the races! I was impressed. We spent 3 days in Blinman in the Flinders Ranges. for a bit of R&R. A welcome treat after the bleached plains surrounding the Oodnadatta track and a rest from putting the tent up every night. We had a little cottage made of stone and local pine logs. It used to be a mine Captains cottage in the last century. It would have been perfect had the open fire worked, it was quite cold in Blinman, South Australia's highest town.

Everything had worked pretty much to plan. nothing had fallen out or off. Except the crook little plastic rear bumper end that just vibrated off on corrugations. The Discovery took an amazing amount of stuff, despite being a bit cramped in the load area and the barely adequate 2 ply Michelins even lasted the trip without the side walls being ripped out. As we left the Flinders to hurry back home, we were brought back to the outside world, by the radio news of the economic collapse of Russia and fears of world wide recession. Great.

Cape York next year.

Chris & Lynne Bull © '98

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