The CBs were chattering, “Did you see that, that motorhome’s going down the track.” The 4WD people were bemused to say the least. How I had even got that far was a story in itself. I was supposed to be over 300 kms away in Coober Pedy.
Instead, I’d called in to Pimba and got some fuel, sucked in by the huge “Spud’s Roadhouse” sign. How could you ignore a place with a name like that?
So it came to pass I got my diesel and was about to drive off when I noticed four signs. That was where it all happened. Just when I worked out that Woomera was only 6kms up the side road someone started talking to me and said Roxby Downs was a surprise, a veritable oasis in the desert.
Someone else butted in from the 15 or so rigs that were parked nearby and said Roxby had a top pie shop. Gosh, and only another 80kms out of my way, a small price to pay. After all, what else was on my agenda for the day?
The road out was an eye opener, the vegetation (read lack of it) made the Nullarbor look like a rain forest.
So I ended up in Roxby, had a good pie and a great apple crumble/vanilla slice that made the whole trip worthwhile (life’s all about priorities remember). Then I went to the visitors centre and they said Andamooka was only 30kms down the road and the people were friendly, if quirky. It is, after all, an opal mining village.
I went to the Roxby footy ground en route where a double header was on and Andamooka was one of the teams so I guessed there wouldn’t be too many locals at the village when I arrived.
I had a chat with the gatekeeper at the game and he worked for Telstra and was also a camera buff. He told me how to get shots of wedge-tailed eagles, told me places he had been with his job and how he had originated at Leigh Creek where they used to do a 1140 kilometre round trip just to play footy on the weekend.
I headed out to Andamooka. I drove right through the town, so called, and ended up at the cemetery, always a repository of some information.
Turns out a lot of Eastern Europeans came here, probably after the war, many Hungarians numbered among them.
It seems a place like Andamooka is about as far as you can get from anywhere. It’s also where Jack Absalom’s father Andy, lived for eight years in a house, so called. It’s difficult to imagine how trying it must be living in a residence such as it is in the middle of a baking hot summer.
It is close to Lake Torrens though and the guy at the tourist centre had said there was water in the lake. Seeing the sign I headed off. Silly me, that was the only road I never asked about.
The road was fair dirt to start with until I came to a nasty little dip that I bottomed out on before reaching another creek crossing whose way was barred by two 4WD vehicles.
They were atop an adjacent hill and I went up to see the view and have a chat. Turns out they were from Port Macquarie and just as the intros were done one of the ladies found a perfect fossilized tree fern which started us all searching for the next 10 minutes with limited success.
I queried them about the road further on and their faces reflected that it might not be such a good idea. One of the guys said I would get to the next nasty section though, so I tried that with the idea of riding my bike the extra distance.
Trouble was, when I got to the nasty spot I couldn’t turn around so I had to go ahead. I spent the next five minutes filling the nasty hole with rocks and navigated it successfully and kept going, on past even more tricky (read “nasty”) bits until I reached the lake’s edge.
The group had promised me water but there was merely a long pond that petered out. Beyond it looked like the lake did indeed have a lot of water so I wandered off to dip my foot in, so to speak.
For three quarters of an hour I walked. With each passing step it became more apparent that there was no water. It was a mirage. How visions like this must have taunted the early explorers. Not only that, the water in the pond was, in the words of one of the 4WDers, “saltier than eating raw salt”.
Tracks of all manner of things could be found along the shore line. Kangaroos, emus, lizards, motorbikes (one way to wreck your machine) and others I couldn’t identify. Here and there dead plant life was being eaten by the salt on the barren surface of Lake Torrens as crystals formed on the stems. A true wasteland.
I ascended a small rock encrusted hill and the view was memorable. The far horizon had the mirage shimmering in the light reflected by the dipping sun. I thought how once my friend Bob had remarked, “It’s the scale of the place” and felt that comment so appropriate to this scene. The vastness of the outback was never better exemplified than in this panorama. A raptor landed in a nearby bush. Perhaps I was the nearest thing to prey he had seen in a while.
The clouds put on a marvellous display overhead. Here I was, the only person now for 20kms, in touch with the wilderness heard of by so many yet touched by so few. Despite the slight damage to my vehicle it’s these types of scenes that stay with you forever.
It made me think how I’d left water in abundance to come out and see……more water. It’s like a magnet out here; mention the word and everyone wants to go and see it. Say it’s raining and everyone wants to go outside and see it.
Back at the campground at Andamooka I did the social thing and joined the campfire group just before the sun dipped below the horizon for the day. I was bemused that one of vans (from Port Macquarie) had the generator going yet they were here beside the fire. Upon questioning I found out that she-who-must-be-obeyed likes her electric blanket and wants the bed warmed up before retiring. I was going to mention that there are other ways to warm a bed but decided not to.
Thus it was that when I hit the highway the next day I only got as far as Lake Hart, along with around 20 other rigs that stopped there. It actually does have water at times and the sunset held possibilities so I grabbed my camera gear and headed down, only to be held up by – a train! I hadn’t even noticed the track by the lake shore but I certainly heard the freight train’s numerous engines coming from a long way off. However, upon closer examination the track goes beneath the rails.
At the lake there’s a mysterious dual line of posts going out into the water, turning 90 degrees left for about a kilometre then left again back to the shore. A pair of small railway wheels was on the shore but it remains a mystery to me what the rotting stumps were all about. It’s hard to conceive of any reason for it being here.
Still, it made a nice foreground for a sunset shot I like to think.
The ruins at Lake Hart are the remains of an old salt mine. Lake Hart was about the last of the inland lakes to be mined for salt, once a huge industry and still going today, though not in as significant quantities.
The last shipment was due to leave Lake Hart in 1934 but was never picked up. To this day the frayed hessian bags with their load can be seen on the shore of the lake and the posts in the photo are where they used to run bogeys out to pick up the salt.
Around further is a restricted area where the Blue Streak missile launch site used to be.