Coward Springs

Our first trip onto dirt roads in the Outback. Several miles north of Roxby, the paved roads come to an end and you eventually come to the Oodnadatta Track. It follows the original path to the interior of Australia. It was used by Aborigines and then by settlers with their camel trains and eventually the first rail line connecting north and south Australia.

When traveling on these roads, they recommend a 4 wheel drive vehicle, 2 spare tires, 10 liters of water per person, a satellite phone and a UHF radio. (We didn't have quite all that stuff.) There are several levels of quality for the dirt roads in the Outback and this one was at the high end. It was fairly straight, level and smooth. Compared to many roads, it also has a fair amount of traffic. I would estimate we saw another car every 20-30 minutes.

Being the only one insured on this vehicle, Duncan got to do all the driving.

The distances can be quite large. As we started the dirt road, it was 250km (150 miles) to the next town... which has a population of 10.

Unfortunately it is common to see a lot of road kill on all the roads around here. Lizards, kangaroo and snakes being the most common victims.

Bird we scared away from its road kill lunch:

We startled a couple emu:

and had a dingo (a wild Australian dog) walk past us.

The original north-south rail line had to follow this route since it was the only one that had the regular sources of water required by steam locomotives. This route also had a lot of trouble with washouts, though, and passage was not always reliable. With the advent of diesel locomotives, this rail line was abandoned and a new one built about 100km to the west.

Remnants of the original Ghan rail line.

On the way, we passed Lake Eyre, the largest salt lake. The middle of the Australian continent contains quite a few salt lakes. This entire region is slowly sinking, forming a basin that water drains into and not out of. I didn't realize Australia also has areas below sea level

Our final destination was the hot springs at Coward Springs. The springs ended up being a bit underwhelming. The water was tepid at best and there was a pump house right next to it that didn't make it feel particularly natural. The flies were a nuisance, but it was refreshing to get in the water after our hot dry drive.

Woomera Life

Here is a collection of miscellaneous events in and around Woomera.

One weekend we and several of our customers participated in a 5k run in Roxby Downs called the Desert Dash.
The particpants: Christa, Duncan, Gabe, Jez, Ian, ?, Allan

The start of the race. There were serious runners, not so serious runners, walkers, kids, people with strollers.

Christa finishing:

 Duncan finishing:

It is wild flower season here in the desert and there is a fair amount of color. In a couple months, there will probably be a lot less color.

The Cudgee bar. A tiny little bar on the edge of Woomera. We went here for Chris and JT''s last night before they headed back to the States.

Chris and JT, ready to head home.

Woomera dinners. Several times a week somebody cooks dinner and 3-6 of us descend on their apartment. We have had some very good meals so far.

Butter Chicken:

Toad in the Hole

Dinner at Christa's apartment: Graham, Tim, JT, Gabe, Chris

Raspberry soda at a restaurant. Beautiful natural color.

Commuting home from work.

Spider removal. I refused to kill this spider and attempted to flick it away from Christa's door. I sent it flying somewhere, but we have no idea where... See Christa scowl.

Lake Hart

One disclaimer I ought to mention: Not all the photos on this blog were taken by me. Though the best ones are obviously mine, a few of the less important, blurry, supporting photos were gleaned from others (primarily Christa, but also Tim, Duncan, JT and anybody else that lets me get my hands on their camera SD card...).  

Lake Hart is a shallow salt lake about a half hour drive to the west of Woomera. Like the Dead Sea, it has no outlet. All the water that flows in evaporates. In the week prior to our visit there was a fair amount of rain and the water level was pretty high. We expect that the lake will look a lot different in a couple months.

As usual, the flies were pretty bad. The locals keep warning us that they will only get worse. None of our bug sprays seem effective. We occasionally test various substances (like Eucalyptus), but have not had much success. I think you just have to tough them out...

A reminder that we are in the Woomera Prohibited Area and that the lake was used for target and bombing practice:

From about 1918 to 1931, Lake Hart was commercially harvested for salt and there are still visible remnants of the operations today. It had some of the purest salt of the time and some consumers claimed it was twice as salty as normal salt.

The salt (and some water) were pushed up into large catchment pens from which the water would drain and  evaporate. We think these are the structures that we still see extending out into the water:

The salt was then harvested and refined on site before being loaded onto the train which runs right by the lake. There is still a pile of some 7000 tons of salt from 1931 that was never picked up:

Wheels from cart used to move salt:

A train came through while we were there. It was mostly freight, but there was one passenger car at the beginning of the train.

Everything down near the water level is covered in salt. We walked across salt out to the edge of the water and then took off our shoes to wade out a ways. In most places, walking was not bad, but there were a few places out in the water where the salt crystals were quite sharp and walking was painful.
The beach was just a layer of salt:

Christa crossing the sharp section of salt crystals:

For the curious or suspicious, here are my sources for the "facts" I present in this post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Eyre_basin
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/35997558
http://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/salt.htm

Kite Flying

Wile driving to Lake Hart (subject of next post), Duncan wanted to stop in a windy, open area to try flying his kites. That sounded mildly interesting. I hadn't flown a kite in a long time and I had my camera to keep me busy if it was too boring.

Hmmm. His kite is pretty large... I've done some windsurfing and the surface area of this kite was similar to a beginning windsurfer sail. That can catch a lot of wind.

So, Duncan (6'4" and weighing a fair number of stones) has to really lean back to maintain control of the kite and it still drags him around a bit.

By pulling on each of the handles, you can make the kite turn, either flying it in figure eights or loops.

An obvious next experiment is to take somebody smaller and less experienced and let them try flying the kite...

The results were not completely unexpected nor devoid of entertainment value:

We all tried the large kite, with somewhat limited success. Mostly we got dragged around and crashed the kite into the ground.

After switching to a smaller kite, we all had a lot more success.