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.