Oodnadatta Track, Coober Pedy and trouble in the Painted Desert!

The Oodnadatta track was quite interesting. It followed the old Ghan railway, with ruins of station sidings and some quirky sculptures along the way. The landscape was very desolate, with lots of salt pans and these amazing mound springs that bubble up out of the tops of hills. We stopped off and walked down to Lake Eyre for a dip!

 In the squishy mud of Lake Eyre            

Hot mound springs along the track                             Ben finally finds his idea of the desert         

We stayed at a really nice camp spot called Coward Springs. After setting up Ben and I went running off looking for the artesian spa. When I caught up with Ben he was standing looking down on the cosy little spa with a young European couple looking sheepishly up at him with no swimmers to be seen!

Coward Springs is a a family run camp on their property which is an oasis in the desert.It even had palm trees, date palms, that were planted a hundred years ago.  Its an honesty box camp but had really nice toilets and wood fired showers. The campsites were tucked away from each other so we really felt like we were there by ourselves. We had a look through their museum which was in one of their beautifully restored buildings.

In the artesian spa at Coward springs.........................and our nice campsite there

Coober Pedy is such an unusual town.80% of the population live in underground houses called dug-outs. Summer temps get up to 48 degrees celcius and winters are quite cold, but the dug-outs neither have air conditioning or heating as they stay around 20 to 25 degrees at all times. This is the first really cold weather we've had. It got down to below 5 degrees at night, so we bought a fan heater, which made a huge difference! We visited Faye's dug-out which is a home that a lovely couple live in now and show you around. Faye and her two girlfriends dug the home in the 60's over a 10 year period with shovels and picks! This amazing 3 bedroom home had such a nice feel to it and was definately an entertaining house with its walk in cellor, bar area a 15m indoor pool, and pool table room. People who live in the dug-outs stick matchsticks in the cracks in their ceiling. If they see a matchstick on the floor they know the earth is moving!

Tom's working opal mine was worth a visit and I recommend doing the guided tour. We were the only ones there and our guide showed us around for over an hour. She actually worked as a miner and has done for 15 years, what a hard life! Crocodile Harry's hut was one of the film locations for Mad Max. What a wierd house.The Breakaways are worth looking at. You do an 80km round trip to take in the beautiful scenery.

 Some of the strange scenery around Coober Pedy        Hannah using divining sticks to find opal

So what disaster? I'll let Ben take over to tell this story.....

"....Hi everyone. The next campsite was in the Painted Desert, and was it painted? no but at different times of the day different the rocks colours change. In the Painted desert we stayed on a cattle station called Arkaringa. Just after we set up Hannah and I were playing on the logs around the campfire. Then I slipped off the log and cut my shin on a star picket. I was balling my eyes out but when Hannah saw it she said YUCK thats GROSS. Because we were out in the middle of no where dad carried me to the car after mum squirted stuff on it and put a bandage on. Then we drove for 1 hour and 15 minutes on a bumpy dirt road to Oodnadatta. The nurse at the medical centre stiched it up (7 stitches) and gave me a tecnus needle. Now I have to have yucky medicine for a week to stop it getting infected. Dad said I was very brave."

Ben on his way to get fixed up....................................The nasty star picket