As stated yesterday, we had heard that the defence force was closing the Stuart Highway for 4 hours from 10 until 2. We decided to leave later rather than earlier so that we would not have to wait too long for the road to open. We did our shopping in Port Augusta and took off for Coober Pedy. There was a bit of traffic heading the same way we were and it became obvious that traffic was coming towards us when it shouldn’t have been if the road was closed. We met up with some people from last night’s restaurant who told us that the road was not closed – advice coming from the police! Michael rang the roads closed number and got a large list of roads closed due to rain, but the Stuart Highway wasn’t mentioned so we don’t know what happened there.
Drove through 500 kms of empty country. There was a lot of water lying around on the sides of the road and all of the lakes had quite a bit of water in them.
When I was here in 1973ish, Lake Heart was a dry salt bed, today it is a huge lake. Even so we saw very little bird or animal life, a few cattle, sheep, a kangaroo, 6 emus, one wedge tail and a few crows. Not much for such a huge area.
We stopped at Spuds for a break, this is in Pimba, just a few kms from Woomera. We think everyone must stop here, it was very busy. May be quite a gold mine for the owners.
Finally got to Coober Pedy about 3:30 and booked in to our underground motel. Went for a walk to the top of the hill that we are under and then took a small walk into town to look at some opal shops. Didn’t buy anything!
We came back to be prepared to take some sunset photos, but the sun was taking too long and it was very cold. Underground is very warm. We do not have any heating but I think it is probably about 22 degrees. Michael has stripped off to his thermal and rolled up his sleeves.
No comments:
Post a Comment