A link to the higher res photos... if anybody cares...
After our visit to Coober Pedy, we continued further north to Arckaringa Homestead and the Painted Desert. We had to drive about an hour and a half on dirt roads around sunset to get to the homestead where we were staying. Before it got dark, we saw some great skies.
Upon our arrival, an older farmer showed up in his pickup drinking a beer. He charged us for our rooms (cash only, no receipts) and then requested help figuring out how to run his new washing machine. Looking at maps, his homestead was at least 40 miles from the nearest town.
It was a fun (and odd) experience. The rooms were quite small and separated from each other by little more than a wall of corrugated metal. I could hear the click in the neighboring room of someone turning on/off their flashlight. A single room:
We had picked up some food for dinner along the way. They had a small kitchen area where we could prepare food if we wanted.
We hung out around the campfire comparing notes with the Aussies on how best to toast marshmallows. Several of our fellow travelers had recently completed some rough off-roading in the Simpson Desert where they were able to average only 6mph with their vehicle.
Around 10pm, all our electricity was shut off, disabling all lights in the rooms as well as the air conditioning. I did not partake in a shower the following morning, but those that did confirmed that at best there was a dribble of cold water along the shower wall. I wish we had a shot of the grammatically incorrect sign warning us not to steal their toilet paper.
Before sunrise the next morning we dashed off to the nearby Painted Desert to watch the sun come up. Waiting...
The sun hitting the hills/mesas of the Painted Desert:
We have since seen worse, but at the time, this was the worst fly situation we had come across. The locals laugh at us and tell us that it will get a lot worse in the coming months. If the flies would just stay out of my eyes, nose and ears it wouldn't be so bad. I have squished a dozen or so in my ear by mistake. All of us have ingested a few while walking or biking.
We got in a little hiking on the hills and saw some very scenic vistas.
We continued driving around dirt outback roads the rest of the morning and early afternoon. Our first destination was Oodnadatta, a small town along the track of the Old Ghan railroad. We had breakfast and resupplied at the Pink Roadhouse.
Me doing some last minute reading of the tour books. I have been berated several times for not paying attention to the scenary from the car because I am engrossed in a tour book.
On the way back, we finally found the Dingo Fence. We had looked for it the weekend before, but never found it. The dingo fence is a 3500 mile long fence built in the 1880s to keep Dingos to the north in order to protect the sheep and cattle farms in the south. Every year, multi-mile sections of the fence are lost to storms and floods and need to be repaired as quickly as possible. On bad years, dingos can kill tens of thousands of sheep.
Duncan got this great picture of the Dingo Fence with the fly in the foreground.
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