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Cross posting this from AI- But this is a bit of a write up on a trip we did from Adelaide in South Australia to almost the geographical centre of the Australian continent. So back in June I had someone decide they were Carlos Sainz and managed to fail their pulsar into the side of my 100 series landcruiser...  After 65 days i FINALLY got my truck back from the crash repairers... its mechanically fixed up (they replaced the entire steering rack knuckle to knuckle because everything was broken) but the barwork still hasnt all turned up so we're waiting until thats done and they'll do all the bar work in one go and fix the guard then, so its still wearing the battle scars of eating a Nissan Pulsar. The reason I got it back was because: 1) Winter in Adelaide is miserable, its cold, its wet, so it soaks into your bones. I work on top of a loving mountain, so I wake up in the dark in the morning for work, drive through the fog, into the clouds on the mountain, work all day in the cloud, then drive home in either the fog or pissing rain. I can go 8+ days without actually seeing the sun, its just "The grey is brighter now" 2) Covid sucks, Im over it and all the bullshit working for a government owned public entertainment site that goes with it. So we ran away. To a place called Dalhousie Springs. Its basically as far north as you can go and still be in South Australia. The drive up was pretty uneventful, around 20 degrees, some whispy cloud around. The country around Hawker in the Flinders Ranges is still pretty dry though- they've been through a pretty bad multi year drought and didnt get much this year.  Spent the first night in a place called Brachina Gorge. The iphone 11 Pro has an absolutely mind blowing night mode- I cant get night photos this nice out of my Canon 7D without some heavy duty photoshop touch ups!  Dinner was grass fed porterhouse steaks done in the Oz Braii and cold oil chips done over the campfire.  If you havent heard of cold oil chips or an Oz Braii, do yourself a massive favour and check out Harry Fisher (Fire To Fork) on Youtube here The next day was back on the road heading north. Eventually once you hit a town named Marree, the bitumen road runs out and you've got a choice- Head north east on the Birdsville Track, or head northwest on the Oodnadatta track, so we aired down to high speed gravel pressures and headed out of town north west. We pulled up camp in one of the nicest campsites in Australia- A place called Coward Springs. A little back story: Australia has this absolutely massive underground water system that spans a huge chunk of the outback called the Great Artesian Basin- it covers something ridiculous like 22% of the Australian Landmass  Basically, you get water recharge into the aquifer in the high rainfall areas of the tropics of queensland and that water travels deep underground where its heated. Eventually it reaches the surface by either flowing out of man made bores or out of natural springs that form where theres a weak area in the overlaying impervious rock. Coward springs is a man made oasis in the middle of the desert- Its just up the road from some natural formed mound springs, but its all fed off a bore into the Artesian Basin. They've got a spa they've built there from sleepers from the original Ghan train line that used to run up the oodna track (this used to be the main rail line from the eastern states to Alice Springs, but they shifted the entire rail line west because they constantly had trouble with track damage in the desert areas the oodna track runs through) and its 29 deg C water all year round. Its a great space to stop and just chill out.  Dinner that night was another Fire to Fork brainchild- Cheeseburger damper. Basically, make two beef patties, melt cheese onto them, cover them with raw onion, pickles, half a pigs worth of bacon, a shitload of sauce and mustard and then wrap the entire thing in a damper and bake.  They were delicious, but my god thats too much food for three people.. Thats too much cheeseburger damper for 6 people! We ended up burning about half of it because we couldnt eat it and it had more energy density than the hardwood we were using for firewood. Next morning, after bacon and eggs we continued to roll on north, stopping at a place called William Creek.  There were some odd locals...  We dropped off the mail we were carrying for the owners of Coward Springs and rolled out of town. Compared to normal the entire outback is deserted because half of Australia isnt allowed into our state!  Because our outback roads are literally made of whatever they could find laying around and are generally a mixture of sand, clay and small gibber rock, they turn into goo when wet, so all outback roads can be closed at a moments notice to protect them from damage. Its a huge fine for going past one of those signs that says closed too- Around $1K per tyre, and if they're feeling lovely with you cos you've made a mess, they'll count your spares too. So for me it would be a $6K fine. For a truck with a road train, that could be north of 62 tyres on the road so a $60K+ fine. Its designed to make people stop. No issues this time, we rolled onward, still heading north. As you head towards the town of Oodnadatta, you get to the Algebuckina bridge.  It was built in 1892 and is 1,927 feet long, comprised entirely of wrought iron sections bolted and riveted together by hand. Its an impressive piece of engineering. Whats also impressive is that in 1974 a flood in the area almost reached the bridge decking! After Algebuckina, we reached the town of Oodnadatta, which is famous for its Pink Roadhouse (Google it- its very, very pink). We filled up with diesel there- $1.89 per litre (for comparison its $1.09 in Adelaide atm) and headed onwards to the Dalhousie Springs.   Dalhousie is another one of the natural springs that have formed on the Artesian Basin, however unlike the bore at Coward Springs, the water in Dalhousie is between 38-40 deg C! Theres a bore about 100km further east into the desert drilled looking for oil and gas called Purni Bore that has water that flows to the surface at 90c!) The amount of water flowing into Dalhousie springs is truly mind blowing- 160L/second, 9600L per minute. Over a 24hr period 34,560,000 litres of water well up out of the ground and flow out of the springs. An Olympic swimming pool is 2.5M litres of water, so this is more than 13 of those flowing out of the rock, into a pool, then out into a wetland delta. It truly is a peaceful, beautiful place.  Dinner was beef stirfry, but since we arent allowed to have campfires at Dalhousie any more because people were being dicks, i never took any photos of the meals I cooked over gas because its just like cooking at home. We camped at Dalhousie for 3 nights and went for a wander out to the Mount Dare Hotel. They've had heaps of rain in the area so a lot of the local waterholes were actually full, which i've never seen before, and I've been up in this country for 10 years now.  It is still a brutally harsh country that could kill you without blinking though.  Sadly, reality called and we had to wander our way back south heading for home, so we packed up our kit and made our way from Dalhousie back to Coward Springs. This time because it wasnt 9 in the morning, we stopped in for a beer at the Willian Creek Hotel. Because tourism has tanked all these little outback towns that rely on the tourist dollar are really doing it tough- Most havent hired their usual backpacker staff, havent hired managers for the tourist season, the pilots who are usually doing flights over lake eyre are behind the bar at the pub in William Creek. So we made a decision to spend a fair whack of money in most of these places to help em out. So i bought beer and diesel... at $2.10 a litre.... That hurt.  Its hard to head home when your missus is telling you its 8 degrees and raining sideways and your looking at that wearing shorts and a tee shirt... After a few beers and a good chat, plus a donation to the Royal Flying Doctors Service, we rolled back down the track into coward springs for the night, where we were treated to a cracker sunset.  And I still dont want to go home...  The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, we saw some pretty cool things because of the rain, like these Sturt Desert Peas.  But eventually I reversed the car into the shed- after taking off the HF antenna because it makes a horrible noise getting stuck in the roller door if you dont and looked down to realise why my arse hurt...  7 Days, 2800kms, 394L of diesel.
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Sep 4, 2020 15:27
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This is awesome. I would love having access to that much open space. Flying in and renting a rig is on my bucket list.
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Sep 6, 2020 01:49
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Atticus_1354 posted:This is awesome. I would love having access to that much open space. Flying in and renting a rig is on my bucket list. Essentially everywhere I went you could do in a mild crossover. We didn’t do any real serious 4wding this trip
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Sep 8, 2020 14:26
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Great thread, great pics 
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Sep 19, 2020 23:51
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