An easy pack up and goodbye Oodnadatta on a clear big blue sky day
Bye Massive flocks of vivid pink galah
Bye black crows sitting on the tin fence around the desert floor campground
Bye lovely quirky pink roadhouse
Gibbon desert makes way for tightly knit mallee scrubby trees to intense red orange sand as we pass the turn off to the Simpson desert then lots of corrugated road through lighter coloured desert plains with the ribbons of green as we pass over the creek beds.
The creek beds have depth markers to 2m so we know there’s a lot of water when the rains come ... and we know there’s people living out here off the land as the odd star picket anchors down the occasional large rusted out barrel to signify a road leading off the Oodnadatta Track to a homestead or cattle station
You notice the small things out here and this morning we’ve enjoyed seeing zebra finches, wedge tailed eagles, kangaroos lifting their heads to see what all the fuss is about as we rattle past
The gibber desert is fading from an intense red to a paler rust as we head toward the end of the Adventure that was The Oodnadatta Track
The air is still
A road train approached like a giant dementor - a halcyon of doom with headlights blazing & indeed it wS a death truck carrying a sorry load of cattle to their demise
The red dust from its wake outlined the road ahead for many k’s as the dust slowly settled
Welbourn hill is a Station quite close to the track and on the last quarter of The Oodnadatta - a sign attached to a saltbush says “ plenty cows”
Haven’t sent any yet
The land around here looks more prairie than desert but up close, it’s still gibber stones and trees are sparse here
Marla was a huge Servo at the end of the track so fuelled up and kept going to make up some kms to be closer to Uluru
First sighting of the rock at 30km from Curtain Springs.
Free camping at a cattle station (Curtain Springs) - after setup then dinner we wandered over to the bar and got talking to a dodgy looking old fella with one cateract encrusted eye and a raw sense of humour - turns out he was the Owner of the Cattle property and the other dodgy guy was his Grandson: you never know who’s who: 90 years old and full of flirt still
A lovely night! Starry and down to zero degrees overnight
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