Left Woomera this morning and headed out to Coober Pedy. Drove past the now defunct Woomera Detention Centre which was a pretty eerie place. The Population at Woomera during its hayday with the weapons testing and detention centre in full swing was about 6,000 it is now 400 (404 including us). The landscape coming into Coober Pedywas littered with with Mullock Heaps (mounds of excavated sand left over after opal mining). Arrived at Coober Pedy a little after our scheduled time but got stuck into it straight away. The school was remarkably busy as was the town (at least compared to Woomera). The drive from Coober Pedy to Marla was quite pleasant albeit one of the straighest roads I’ve ever seen. We drove through/across the fence line of the the longest fence in the world (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo_Fence). Marla is about 250km north of Coober Pedy which means that by the time we finished our work we had to do the last 50kms after sunset. Not an advisable option if you can you can avoid it. We nearly had an up close and personal interaction with some stray cattle on the side of the road but thankfully they just stood there and watched us go by. We saw 1 burned out wreck and a couple of abandoned cars on the side of the road. Marla is our setoff point now as we head into the the Aborignal lands where there are no paved roads, hotels, or mobile phone reception. The next 8 days and 1500km of our trip will be on dirt tracks and sand dunes where we will be sleeping in swags under stars and cooking what we catch (only kidding – George has a stash of food under the trailer). Will try and blog if I can from the communities that we head into but can’t promise anything. If I’m not able to update this blog we, we will be back in Marla on Wed, 12 Aug and will update then.
No comments:
Post a Comment