G’day from Wudinna,

At Glendambo, telephones were absent from the rooms, and I had no mobile telephone signal (although others did?), hence the hiatus in my daily emails.

Yesterday morning I got away from Wilpena around 8:15. Toting a picnic pack from the resort, I initially headed south for 30km, back toward Hawker, opposite to my intended direction of travel, then took the Moralana Scenic Drive west for 25km, to join the main road north to Leigh Creek (the site of open cut coal mines that supply the power station at Port Augusta). At Lyndhurst, past Leigh Creek, the bitumen ended, and I was headed for Marree. At Marree, I turned west along the Oodnadatta Track, rather than continue north along the Birdsville Track, the temperature having reached 27 degrees at around 10:30am (and didn’t vary much from that for the rest of the trip). I’m not sure why they call it a “track”; it’s quite wide, and mostly in such good condition that I found my speed creeping up to 120kph in places! (see below, taken through the windscreen, hence the “UFOs” in the sky).

After about 70km on the Oodnadatta Track, I headed south again, along the Borefield Track, to Roxby Downs, where I rejoined the tarmac. Further south, just past Woomera, I joined the Stuart Highway, heading northwest to Glendambo. I arrived at the “Glendambo Outback Resort” around 4:15, after travelling some 693km, around 270km of which was on gravel roads. “Resort” is somewhat of an overstatement, although the room could have been much better if they’d bothered to invest in a little maintenance. The bar and restaurant were quite good though.

This morning I departed Glendambo around 7:45, with another picnic pack, heading for Wudinna on the Eyre Highway, to the south. The route covered 425km, all but 5km on gravel roads, first due west for about 50km to the hamlet of Kingoonya, then generally south, through various pastoral leases, and near Wudinna, the Gawler Ranges National Park. The roads were generally quite good (see below for an example, although the condition, and scenery, was quite varied),

and although I could have gone faster in many places, I stuck to around 80kph, as they were narrower, and bendier, than the previous day’s tracks. I arrived at the motel in Wudinna around 3, and after unpacking the car, headed to the bar, to wash the dust from my throat.

Cheers,
Julian