We finally made it to Birdsville after spending a few days
on ‘the Track’ from Maree – an experience on our ‘want-to-do’ list. It is a
place we will return to because it is remote and getting there allows you to
appreciate the amazing beauty that only Australia can offer (biased of course)
– colours to take your breath away, an amazing variety of plants - in a small
500 mm circle around my feet I spotted over 6 different species of plants. In
the desert! And that’s without getting down on my knees to look closer. Bird
life abounds in a vastness which makes no concessions for anyone – surprises
lurk around every corner, over every sand dune ridge. It is all very different and quite intriguing. From the reports you hear, the Birdsville Track
was different to what we had expected. I had imagined a different kind of remoteness
– all very Tom Kruse, floods and bogs (more on that later), poor roads, risks
and various challenges. What we found however
was a better road surface than what we have experienced on the Oodnadatta Track. The signs welcoming you to Birdsville say
‘population 200 odd +/-7000’ so I guess they maintain the roads in reasonable
condition to keep the tourists coming (or maybe we were just lucky). Thousands descend on Birdsville for the famous
horse race and if the Cooper is flooded, as it sometimes is, then cars line up
for days to get across on the car ferry which is up stream way off the track. But I digress ……
We took it easy getting this far because we don’t have
pressing destination deadlines which is absolutely wonderful, but we both also realised
that we need to slow down and smell the roses – or dust! We made overnight
stops along the way to top up our water tanks and take on supplies and extra
fuel. We are now carrying 210L in our
tanks (and another 20L inside) plus 185L of diesel (incl 50 L backup) so we
slosh a lot as we go along. We then
headed for Heysen country and the Flinders Rangers.
Having spent some time on an early trip to the Ranges, we
didn’t do much exploring, choosing only to drive through a couple of narrow
gorges - Brachina and Bunyeroo Gorges which were rocky river beds for much of
the way; the last time we were there we had driven one of them at dusk so
really didn’t see much. Absolutely beautiful, but quite rough driving over the
rocks at times. Reminded me of the Finke river gorge in central Aust. Got a few
strange stares as we bopped and bounced along with our caravan in close pursuit
(thank goodness).
In spite of an apparent emptiness, there is such a lot to
see on the trip north to Maree which is the start/end point of both the
Birdsville and Oodnadatta tracks. Glorious purple mountain ranges on both side
some of the way, countless old stone ruins crumbled along hundreds of Ks as
reminders of failed attempts and dashed hopes to farm the area in the 1800s,
humungous coal mines at Leigh Creek, sunsets to make an artist weep, and lots
else like ‘Talc’ Alf. He’s an odd ‘take me as I am’ character who uses cast-off
slabs of local talc to carve political and religious statements and theories on
the origin of a number of things. And he
has a story about each one if you have time to spend with him! We picked up
some stuff from him last time we were through there.
No comments:
Post a Comment