RAIN!

It is just amazing! I was driving the loop road around Uluru, stopping whenever I saw something interesting, when it started to rain. It's amazing enough that Lake Eyre had water in it, and that there had been enough rain that the country was green and flowering, but for it to rain just as I was driving around was absolutely marvellous (note that it was a small cloud so the rain didn't actually cover the whole rock).

The Rock

Today I reached Uluru. It is so green around here, you wouldn't think you were in the middle of a desert. Every plant is in bloom. I'm sure I've never seen photographs of Uluru with greenery on it - let alone Kata Tjuta! I had hoped (when I heard that there might be a shower tomorrow) that I would see it raining on Uluru, but it is raining now - in the middle of the night - and by sunrise there won't even be any damp patches on the rock.

I got too hot every time I went out into the sun today, but hopefully I will get an early start and be able to do a couple of the walks tomorrow. I did a couple today, but I stopped pretty early when I attempted others. And some were closed because it was too hot.

Near sunset I was at the car sunset viewing area (there's a separate one for busses), and there were clouds coming up in the west to stop the rock going red, so I left because there were so many cars coming into that car park. As I was going out a lot more cars and busses were coming in - and it's not even peak season.

Time for a bit of Australian doggrel

Today my mind kept flipping to "the pub with no beer", "where the pelicans build their nest", and even "camped by the shade of a colibah tree".

The plane trip over Lake Eyre, the Painted Desert and William Creek was excellent. There could have been a few less clouds, and the place could have been less hazy, but those only made the photos poorer than they could have been. The painted desert is bigger than the one in the US although it doesn't have the colour varieties that the US has. Truely worth the visit all by itself. But then came Lake Eyre. It was evidently full two weeks ago, but now it is a bit lower, so the rim of salt is there, and I think that makes it even better. The sun shone towards the end of the flight over the lake, which made it perfect.

We didn't see the pelicans as they are at the extreme northern end of the lake, but the pilot told us that there are over 200,000 there currently.

William Creek officially has four people in the town, but there are the pilots for the tour business, and the bar staff and the cook... So there would be about fifteen people currently living in town. Because of the recent flooding and the mud everywhere, the pilots are really busy ferrying food and needed supplies to all the mines in the area (let us not forget that the biggest cattle farm in the world is next door - Anna Creek is 28,300 sq. km., more than the size of Israel with only nine people, so this is vast), and are running out of supplies themselves - not the least of which is beer. They do still have cider and wine. They also have a paved airstrip and seven planes, with others coming in all the time, as many people come there to see the painted desert by plane, and then go on to Birdsville.

Then I went up the road to Marta for the night. Hopefully I will arrive at Uluru at lunchtime tomorrow. Rather than just a road house, Marta has a supermarket, an art gallery, police station, hotel, a caravan park complete with swimming pool, and a restaurant. It is rather nice. The caravan park has GRASS! And shady trees!

Oh, and William Creek has the remains of a British satellite that crashed into Anna Creek.

By the way, WiFi is extremely iffy in the outback. Small towns get a very small allocation - not even enough to run their businesses. Larger towns don't get much either, so anywhere that relies on the temporary satellite just doesn't really have it available. Alan gave me a Telstra thing that works on the mobile, so I'm creating the posts and then uploading with that to reduce the usage.

Sea Seen

Coober Pedy has mullock heaps starting at least forty kilometres south of the town, which surprised me because every other opal mining town seems to have had a much smaller loade. The land is very flat, and suddenly you come across a bunch of heaps, then you go on a bit further and there are more, and so it goes.

Today was quite cool, thankfully! It was pleasant going through the flat treeless areas, and then suddenly getting arable land, then the hills around Willmington and Mount Remarkable. Finally on to Port Augusta and the long view of the gulf before turning inland to the parts of the trip I have never seen before. The Sturt Highway (like most of the rest of the trip today) was practically deserted and I couldn't believe it when there were two overtaking sections on the road, let alone the white paint across the road 100 km from anywhere that looked like a pedestrian crossing! The only time I was stuck behind a vehicle for more than a minute was when I was going through the long double line section near Willmington.

I saw a fox near the border, a few cattle, a few kangaroos (including a couple of reds), a flock of galahs, a lot of crows, but not much else. One of the towns near Willmington boasts of having a Giant Euchalypt - quite a broad River Red Gum! The salt lakes on the Sturt looked great - especially as they all had some water in them. 140km south of Coober Pedy the land started looking wet, with the soil looking very muddy and a bit marshy in places. And in one of the marshy places there were two wedge tailed Eagles. Then there was free standing water (in pools), and the creeks all looked like they might have a trickle flowing.

On The Road Again

Sydney to Alice Springs in seven days!

This morning Alan drove me to Sydney, to pick up the van I'm relocating. They allow five days, but I booked an extra two (which was the maximum I could get). It comes with dark blue sheets and towels, a doona and kitchen equipment.

In some ways it is excellent. I'm going to have a compact RV overseas, which is a little bigger than this, so the real reason for hiring it isn't the journey but the experience. Already I'm learning a lot! Don't get a pop top when you are a short solo traveler - the pop top is anchored by four clamps at the corners which are too high for me to reach, and the awning assumes that there are two people to pull it out.  Since I'm short, I'm capable of being inside without the pop top being up. However, the bed needs the pop top to be up because its mattress is folded. The rear vision mirror doesn't work because of the van behind, and I rely on that mirror much more than the side ones. Seven days will allow me to get comfortable with driving with the side mirrors only.

Unfortunately the van wasn't ready when we arrived, so I couldn't start the trip until about 1:30pm, so I only made it to Mudgee.

On the way, I stopped at the Blue Mountains for lunch. It was a good place to have a break since Sydney traffic stops about there and the country begins. The Western highway is being remade, so the entire journey to Lithgow from Katoomba was roadworks. But it was nice. The scenery is beautiful, with the really broken landscape that typifies the greater Blue Mountains. Further on is even better, with rolling hills and broken scenery in the background all the way to Mudgee, as you are travelling at the back of the Great Dividing Range. It helped that I was travelling in late afternoon, because the whole scene had a golden glow. There had been rain, so the leaves on the trees sparkled in the sunshine as I went past.

The country looks better than further south - the grass is greener and longer. Of course, this will change tomorrow as the journey takes me further and further into the dry, red centre that is currently in flood.

The picture is of the Blue Mountains - the only place I stopped, as everywhere else I was unsure that I could drive out after I had parked, or had paid parking, and I didn't have any change for the machines.

Animals

It rained today. The sides of the road had puddles even though the more westerly areas are arid. When it wasn't raining, it was pretty good. The scenery changed to dryer and dryer vegetation. The trees got smaller and sparser, the soil got redder, and was more and more visible, the whole landscape got flatter until it was completely flat and you could see the curvature of the earth. 

There were a lot of warnings on the road about soft edges, so I only pulled over in designated stops. Even there, there were indications that several people had got bogged in the first one, so from then on, only bitumin stops were deemed appropriate! Which was unfortunate. There were some lovely pictures I could have taken. The Barrier Highway has a huge number of really good rest stops now, but they are in hollows or have a hill strategically placed so that the scene I wanted to take was blocked from view - every single one!

Unfortunately whenever it wasn't raining, there were too many animals. At least a thousand goats - they have become even more prolific than several years ago. About ten emus, including one small solo emu that looked like it was half grown. Gee it was gorgeous. It was all fluffy and its neck looked like an alpaca. And then there were the kangaroos - probably at least 200. This was the middle of the day - from about 12:30 - 2:30 - when self respecting kangaroos are asleep, and they were licking up any puddles that had formed on the road, and they wouldn't move! Of course, these animals weren't all together - they were spread out in bunches of two here, four there, and, in the case of the goats, maybe up to twenty.

I visited the scenic lookout at Cobar, the Fort Bourke Hill, which overlooks the open cut gold and copper mine there.

I'm spending the night in Broken Hill.