Up at 6 and it’s really cold. We wanted to get away by 7:30 and end up driving out about 7:15, so that promising. We make our way up to Blinman, we pass dozens of Emus in the paddocks beside the road, a couple even cross in front of us.
We arrive in Blinman and it’s a really tiny town with only a café and a pub…but both are closed this morning. The Café will open in 30min, but it hardly seems worth waiting so we continue on. The road here turns back to dirt and we drive through Parachilna Gorge, maybe not up to Brachia standard, but still pretty impressive in any case.
We hit the main north south Outback Highway and start heading north.
There are these huge creek crossing, metres deep, anywhere else it would be a bridge, but here the road just drops and crosses the creek bottom.
We soon arrive at Leigh Creek, we need to top up fuel, but there is a small IGA style supermarket here and it will be the last one of these for a week, so we use the opportunity to top up on some grocery’s
We end up being there over an hour, a bit longer than expected. Leigh Creek use to house a lot of workers for the nearby Coal mine, but that closed years ago, so the town is slowly dying.
North again and we drive through Lyndhurst, let’s say the reputation is bigger than the town. A few houses at most. Blink and you miss it. Speaking of miss, I didn’t even see the turnoff sign to the Strzelecki Track.
North of Lyndhurst we stop to visit the Ochre pits, they are massive, you’d think it was a small quarry. It looks more like a moonscape than the rest of the surrounding area.
Up the road we take a short detour into the ruin town of Farina. The big thing here is the underground bakery (did someone say Bakery!) From May to June they operate it and volunteers sell locally baked bread to raise funds to restore the old buildings. While nice, I did expect a bit more, it’s really only the bakery and a few other buildings that have any major restoration work done.
We continue onto Marree, there is a road crew working. Out here they are on UHF CH 40 so we hear them chatting and overhear them making way so we can pass. I jump on to say thanks. So much nicer when you can talk to them.
A quick photo stop at the John MacDougal Stuart (Of Stuart Highway Fame) memorial. Since planning this trip, I’ve done a bit of research on Sturt, Stuart and of course Burke and Wills.
Finally, we arrive in Marree. We take a couple of shots of the beginning of the Birdsville Track. While we’re not particularly hungry, we stop in at the pub anyway. The guys have a chat with the barman, who is from Spain (Catalonia to be exact).
Greg and I take a walk around town and have a look at the old station, The rail head use to be here, but has since moved, hence the town is so much smaller than it once was.
Fed and watered, we finally are ready to hit the Oodnadatta track.
The track starts off fantastic, much better than feared and we’re easily doing highway speeds, the only issue is the dust, so we need to keep some distance between the cars.
About 50km later we stop at these sculptures that some guy has created. How odd to see these just out of the side of the road in the middle of nowhere…… Some are really good though.
We’re not far from Lake Eyre, about 7km from the main lookout. The guys see a track leading down, so we take it and start heading towards the lake. The view is amazing and we’re 100% sure there is water in the lake and we should be able to reach it. We navigate the track down to the salt flat and start slowly driving out to the lake, but the water seems to be getting further and further away, is it just a mirage? Soon enough it becomes clear the salt flats are too soft and probably won’t take the weight of the cars. Still absolutely sensational to be down here on the actual lake.
Back to the road and we stop at the official lookout, being a bit higher is clear the lake is really quite full. It’s so cool to think we get to see it in flood.
It’s getting late in the day, we really need to find a place to camp. Any thought of getting to William Creek is fading as fast as the daylight. Heading west the sun is not doing us any favours either.
We initially think about Coward Spring, but as this a “commercial” campground, not ideal, but it seems to fit. We consider some side of the road options, but the scrub doesn’t seem appealing. The next wikicamps suggested place seems crap. Finally, we see Beresford Siding, it’s a bit further at 40odd k’s, but seems the best option so we keep driving.
While late, we take the 4km detour to see “The Bubbler” and Blanche Cup spring. So unusual to see these raised mounds of water. The colours of the mud and the way it moved at the base of the bubbler was bizarre.
Still 40km to go and it’s about 5:15, so driving into sun on these roads is unpleasant, but we need to push on.
We pull into Beresford Siding, a place I had planned to stop for a visit. We’ve hit the Oodnadatta track camping jackpot. Beresford Siding has an old ruin building with the old water tower. Off the Track, and surprisingly no one is here. What a fantastic spot.
We quickly setup and get ready before dark, but taking photos of the old building in this red dusk light is also taking priority.
As the night fades, and as the moon has not risen we start to see the best stars we’ve seen this whole trip, all the better for this completely flat 360° view horizon to horizon.
We find night modes on the cameras and we’re like kids with new toys. This is such a special place to stop for the night.
Bang on 8:40 the moon starts to rise, and as we’re ready for it, we’re treated to the reddest of moon rises over the flattest of plains. The one we saw back in Lake Burrendong was pretty good, but this takes the cake.
Only bummer is we’re really 100km short of where I wanted to be, and tomorrow is a big day too, so it is not easy to make up. We agree to leave at 8:00 and see how we go. At least tomorrow there are not heaps of stops to make.
Your main photo of the old ruined building is sensational, I love the old buildings. The Bubbler looks very interesting, will do some Googling to find out more about it.