Into the Outback (No, not the restaurant) – 1/16/2013
Jan 17th, 2013 by admin
It’s not possible to determine what time it is when you awake if you’re sleeping in an underground room with, obviously, no windows. Wake up. Fumble for watch. Only 5:30. Go back to sleep. Wake up. Fumble for watch. Only 5:40. Really fall asleep this time. Wake up. Fumble for watch. It’s still only 6:00. Give up on sleep. Get up at 6:30.
On the surface, it’s already a bright sunny day with the prospect of another scorching above 45ºC day. We pack up, get fuel and head back on the Kemp Road toward the Oodnadatta Track.
The road is smooth and fast and we’re soon out of the opal mining area. No holes. They should put up a sign saying “It is now safe to walk backward.” We’re on our way to the Painted Desert which was recommended to us last night. It’s a left off the Kemp about 100 kilometers from CP. The scenery, if you can call it that, is flat and barren as far as the eye can see. More or the same.
The road to the Painted Desert is narrower that the Kemp but its well graded also so we make good time. About 50 kilometers farther, we trun off for the car park for the hike around the Painted Desert.
The Painted Desert is actually an eroded mesa with beautifully colored mineral deposits and there’s a path that leads you around the area. The hillside facing the car park is palette of reds, yellows and grays. Cameras out, snapping away.
It’s not really hot yet so we head up the path to see more of the area. The path finally ends at the top of a small hill that is almost the same elevation as the mesa that it has been eroded out of. Beautiful spots of color all 360º around. Back down the hill and down into a ravine that brings even more spots where the brilliantly colored minerals just slide down the sides of the mesa. Back to the car and back to the Kemp Road.
We arrive in Oodnadatta in a couple of hours and stop at the iconic Pink Roadhouse. The Pink Roadhouse is a general store/fuel stop/hotel/bar/restaurant/repair and towing building. And, yes, it’s all painted pink. You’d never be able to find a flamingo in here. The temperature has really climbed (into the low 40’s) so there’s almost no one around. We stop the car and it looks and feels like a ghost town.
Inside the Roadhouse, however, there are a few people having lunch. This is also the post office and permit center so there is actually more going on than it first appears. We get fuel and then order some lunch.
It is truly impossible to describe this place. On the walls are old faded pictures and new clippings. Stories of the first people to traverse the Simpson Desert that starts just north of here. The afghans and their camels. A gift shop that is solely dedicated to all things Pink Roadhouse with, of course, pink being pretty much the only color available.
There is also a table set up as a memorial to the husband of the owner who was tragically killed last year in a rallying accident. That alone is a good enough reason to stop here. There is some question about whether or not the Roadhouse will survive. There is a For Sale sign on the front of the building though it will take a very special person to take this over. I certainly hope someone does. The special personalities that live out here are what gives this area the respite from the crushing desolation all around.
We head back on the road. We are in our last couple of hundred kilometers of the Track. We are heading for Marla and the main North/South road from Port Arthur and Darwin. At Marla, we turn right and head due north into the Northern Territory. Still another time zone change but, since we really aren’t sure what time it is anyway, it only stands out as a curiosity.
We continue north to Erldunda and then turn lest to the west and head for Uluru (Ayer’s Rock.) Still another 150 or so kilometers into the setting sun with the temp now up around 44ºC and we stop for the night at a roadhouse in Curtain Springs.
We take a “budget” room for AUD105 in what looks like a remodeled shipping container. The bath and shower are outside in a separate small building but the room is clean and tidy and the air-conditioning works. Back to the bar for a couple beers and some revival.
Later, after fighting off the resident emu who keeps trying to get in the car, I get the luggage out of the car and into the room which is pleasingly frigid. It had been nearly sweltering when I first opened it but it was fine now.
Later, it’s dinner and a few more beers. The dinner was quite good and the setting is quiet and calm. There’s almost no traffic on the road out front. Now that it’s after sunset, the birds have quieted and the emu is gone for the night.
Earlier when had first sat at the outdoor table facing the kitchen, there were two men who turned out to be tractor mowers cutting the grass on the highway verge. One left for his room soon after we sat down but the other wanted to chat. Then the Question followed by the Answer followed by the long explanation about how you drive a car from California to Australia.
We’re just about finished with dinner when the owner ‘s son-in-law, Rowan, of the place stops by and sits down for a chat. He wants to know about our trip but we want to know about his cattle station that the roadhouse is part of. He obliges.
The station has 3,500 to 4,500 cattle out on the open outback. They own 1,029,000 acres more or less. That’s just about 1,600 square miles. Their station goes all the way to the border with the Aboriginal Lands and includes a mountain, Mt. Conner, that dominates the area.
We have a great night chatting with him about how you actually run a cattle station that’s this big. How do you count your cattle? We control the water. The cattle know where the water is and in order to get to it they have to go through a gate. We count them there.
Things have changed over the years. Instead of patrolling the area on horseback, they use helicopters. The cattle breeds have changed to breeds that are more tolerant of the arid conditions here. Now feral camels are a big problem. The camel population is thought to be in the neighborhood of 2,000,000 camels. There is a culling program that tries to keep the numbers in check but it has no hope of even denting the camel population.
The owner’s (Peter Severn now 85) daughter, Ellie, comes by to share the conversation but she has to leave to get her orphaned joey back in his bag for the night. We didn’t understand that statement either.
They told us that the joey was orphaned after its mom had been hit by a car. But sometime later, they fessed up to the real story: the mom ‘roo had been killed but the joey was given to some aboriginal kids to play with and they usually kill it before long. Another stockman had seen the kids with it and rescued it from the kids and gave it to the owner’s wife. They let it out during the day to forage on the grass around the roadhouse but they had to take it in at night so that the feral dogs didn’t get it.
So what about the bag? Well, joey spend most of their time in their mother’s pouch and, as they get older, the mom kicks them out to learn how to live on their own. When they need to get back in the pouch for a meal or to sleep, they come up to the mom’s pouch and scratch at it to get her to relax her muscles so the they can literally somersault into the pouch head first. That explains why you see so many ‘roos with their joeys upside down in their pouches.
That makes for easy caring by the adoptive mother. She just goes up to the joey with a bag, places in front of the joey and he/she just somersaults in. Then she carries the bag with an upside down joey inside into the house had hangs the bag on a door or a chair back. In the morning she takes bag and joey outside an dumps the joey out on the grass for another day in the life of an orphaned joey. Just one more thing to know about Oz.
The drinks have been finished and we call it a night. It’s been a great conversation. More cattle station details than we could have ever found out on our own. How many camels was that again?
Tomorrow, Uluru.
Obi-wan