Rocked in to Port Augusta last Monday, late. Headed for the visitors centre and 20 minutes later we were completely revising our travel options: even ‘good’ dirt roads were looking ominous.

So up a dead end road through Quorn, Hawker & Leigh Creek to Lyndhurst from where we took the flight over Lake Eyre. Dead end in more than one way. The countryside, dominated by the Northern Flinders Ranges, was dotted with abandoned homesteads and towns either stillborn or long dead. Seems in the 1850’s they got all excited about the discovery of Lake Eyre; so up came the settlers. I got no sense of whether or not Eyre had actually checked the water in the lake for salinity! Land was leased, not squatted upon, and the SA Govt required stocking at 300 sheep/sq mile. The town of Farina was envisaged to be the ‘bread basket’ of the colony. We flew over that particular ghost town!

The flight over Lake Eyre was interesting, and there were wonderful colours in the salts (lake currently at 70% of capacity and max depth 2+ meters); but not as spectacular as we had hoped!
We did about 100 km on good dirt roads and about 20 km through Brachina Gorge in the Flinders. This section basically wandered in and out of the creek bed and we had a number of shallow creek crossings. All in all our decision to revise our travel plans was confirmed!

Also walked in to Wilpena Pound on our way back down to Port Augusta. You could really get to love the north Flinders Ranges as long as you were not trying to farm there!

So back in Port Augusta and then on to the ‘real’ road north, the Stuart Highway. Couldn’t help ourselves though. Diverted off at Woomera to visit Olympic Dam, Roxby Downs and Andamooka. Words fail me in trying to describe Andamooka: maybe a junk yard sitting on an opal mine! The place certainly has character. One of the locals told us the best (non-mining) attraction was the cemetery. Yep! Glad we went out there though.

Lovely camping spot next to Lake Hart last night. Another salt lake with abandoned salt mine and spectacular sunset across the lake.

Tonight finds us at Coober Pedy. Certainly a bigger opal mining town and a bit of a dump ” lacks the character of Andamooka. Did a short tour that showed us some of the town’s history, a bit about opals, a ‘typical’ underground house (est 50% of residents live underground) and a short trip through an opal mine.

Current plan is to be at Uluru in two nights time, then Alice Springs by maybe Friday or Saturday. Or maybe not!

Hard to pick only 5 photos ” the limit I have set myself.