Red Red Rocks

From Coober Pedy, on Sunday we continue along the National A87, through miles and miles (and even more kilometers) of relative nothingness. We cross into the Northern Territory, where the speed limit goes up to 130 kph. The old Camry does not complain about the increased speed, though the gas gauge is a concern out here. Gas was about $1.55 per liter back in civilization, but is much more expensive the further Outback we get. At Erlunda, where we turn West towards Uluru - Kata Tjuta, it's over $2.30 per L. But you truly do NOT want to run out of fuel out here. There are occasional helpful signs though.

We drove onward until we reached the Ayers Rock Resort and Campground. This place has grown and developed quite a bit since the Meryl Streep movie about the dingo eating the baby incident. There are fancy condo-type buildings and a central restaurant-shopping complex. The camping area is nice, though the camp kitchens are a bit primitive, surprisingly. We set up the big tent for two nights, and made it to one of the Sunset Lookout areas just as the sun was going down.

Uluru at sunset

The Olgas (Kata Tjuta) at sunset

My favorite type of Eucalyptus, coppiced (our camp and car in background)

My Galah friends nearby

In the morning we head to the big red "monolith" now known by its aboriginal name, Uluru (formerly Ayer's Rock.) There is an 11K walking path around the base, which takes us closer and further away at times, for an ever-changing view of the surreal thing. There are areas more sacred to the "original owners" (as the local tribes are now known) that require special protections and where photography is forbidden. There are "male" and "female" sites that are not supposed to be viewed at any other place. Out of respect we did not take pics in the forbidden areas. It took us 4 hours to walk the base, accompanied much of the time by the little black nose-seeking flies.

Who is that masked woman

In front of the red rock

What does this look like to you?

Beautifully made wooden benches for a rest

Red rocks

Steep! (and fake)

It's a long way up!

Color changes with the light

After our hike we came back to camp, took showers and decided to have a nice dinner at the resort restaurant. It was lovely and relaxing and the food was good if expensive. Tuesday morning we broke camp and headed to Kata Tjuta, another rock formation about 20K away. The walking path we chose here is a bit more challenging than Uluru. We weave in and out of the rocks, climbing and descending. It was shorter but took a bit longer to complete.

Heading to the other red rocks in the morning

Try not to do this here

Watching us

Picture of the picture taker

Photographee

Tree hugger: I just love these beautiful gum trees

After our hike, we headed back along highway 4, and stopped to camp at the free campground at the Curtin Springs cattle station. We considered getting dinner at the roadhouse there, but they were very busy and no one seemed overly concerned with getting us a table. So we went back to our rough little site amongst the caravans and had instant mashed potatoes and cup a soup over our little wood burner. It was quite nice, and we slept well to the sounds of cattle mooing.

Into the Interior

Long drive today. We left Port Augusta and headed up the A87/Stuart Highway, named for the first European to cross Australia from South to North. This road is the major route up the middle, but despite this  there is hardly any traffic. Other than caravans and the occasional "ute" we are now mainly sharing the road with the infamous Road Trains. These are semis pulling 3 or 4 trailers, over 50m in length.

Passing a short Road Train...at least you can see a ways up the road!

Lots of dead roos and cattle on the roadside

We saw more emus than any other wild animal along this stretch

There is a whole lot of nothing along this road. Not many towns, and hardly any other roads. The desert is getting redder, but the scrub is surprisingly green, especially since it is fall in the Southern Hemisphere. We drive and drive and drive. As we got closer to our intended stop for the night, Coober Pedy (about the only "town" on this stretch of road), things got a little more interesting.

Our first Dingo, heading into town

Apparently people fall into holes out here

There are several camping options in Coober Pedy. Once we read about it, Shawn kind of set his heart on the one that boasted of the unusual offering of "underground camping." This leads us down a road that does not look very much like a vacationer's paradise...more like some kind of industrial site. But there, in the middle of some opal mining operation is the caravan park. It's kind of an interesting place, but one o the more striking features is the black flies that swarm around your face. They don't bite but it seems like their prime directive is to fly up your nose. Fortunately there is a brisk breeze, so if you stand just right, you can keep them out of mucus membranes. Or, you can buy one of the fly nets for sale at the registration office. They are meant to be worn over a hat, but I see one camper with one on her head. The flies are definitely annoying.

We can camp in one of the underground rooms, a former working opal mine, for "free" if we pay for the evening's mine tour. The tour costs about what a campsite would, so I'm not sure of the reason for offering it this way, but whatever. The people are friendly, and although the underground rooms do somewhat resemble prison cells, it will be be nice to set up the tent out of the wind. We can even leave the rain fly off.

Our cell ;)

View of the park and huge sky

going underground

We decide to go out for pizza in town before the tour; we also had time to do a bit of shopping at one of the many opal retailers that line the main drag. It's a bit of a hard sell, and I am looking seriously at some lovely stones, when Shawn finds the Boulder Opals, and it's all over. ;) I select 3 beautiful stones, with flecks of opal in the native rock, and cut so that a wire channel wraps along the edge. These will make beautiful jewelry when I get my hands on my tools again someday... The pizza place, John's Pizza Bar and Restaurant, is great. We had an Aussie Bush pizza with kangaroo and emu meat on it, and scarfed the whole thing. The proprietor came out to talk with us. He was, interestingly enough, Greek, and had been here for 27 years. He said it's like the wild west without guns. He had spent some time in the US and talked to us a little about the current state of affairs, and bought us a cappucino. It was a nice time.

The Opal Mine Tour is quite interesting, and well attended. Our guide, the same bloke who checked us in earlier, really knows his stuff. The whole reason for this town is opal deposits...over 80% of the world's opals come from this area. Shawn is quite down with the geology, I just love opals.

Shawn with the divining rods, trying to detect a prehistoric slip

Our guide gave us quite the detailed description of the process of using explosives to move rock!

As it turns out, another term for "underground camping" could be "snore amplification chamber." We couldn't see the other campers in the other rooms, but in the middle of the night we could certainly hear some of them at least! So it wasn't the most restful night for me, but come morning we were ready to head to our next destination: Uluru!

North by Northwest

Took the B64 through more lovely countryside on Friday. We stopped in Burra for a potty break, and Shawn took the opportunity to do some yoga stretches at the rest area.

New pants and "thongs"

Best Highway Name (for a road NOT taken!)

We had decided to avoid driving into Adelaide, and instead maybe try to find a place near the ocean before heading north into the interior for the next big chunk of the trip. The scenery was still relatively dry and Mediterranean-- we had only seen a couple drops of rain since leaving Brunswick heads! 

Very Australian trees

Clearing sky

We passed a beachside caravan park in Port Pirie, but decided to press on to Port Augusta. Which, in hindsight may have been a mistake. Port Augusta is, as the name would imply, a port city. We could not find a "beach" park anywhere, so ended up at a regular park. This place had the nicest camp kitchen we had ever seen, complete with dishes and cookware as well as gas range, fridge and kettle. There was a grocery store a few blocks' walk up the road, so we  grabbed shopping bags and went for supplies. Since we could actually cook, we got eggs and sausages and veggies and some wonderful Australian yogurt, RyeVita crackers, avocados and some other munchie type foods for the road. We had a lovely dinner, the first time I had really cooked in ages.

As it turns out, there was a theater in town, showing The Avengers. Shawn really wanted to see it, so we went. It was a small cinema in a small town, but bigger than many of the places we'd been. It was funny as we sat in the lobby waiting for the theater to open, most of the people who came in seemed to know each other. Also, overweight, oddly-dressed teenagers are not strictly a U.S. phenomenon. The movie was fun!

We did a load of laundry and had showers and I made scrambled eggs with leftover chicken sausages for breakfast. I boiled the rest of the eggs, in case cooking facilities would be limited on our next stops. We froze a few water bottles and made a sort of makeshift cooler with the two plastic tubs we had acquired...food and ice in the inner one, and a couple more bottles in the outer one covered with towels and the rescued wool blanket from Zaytuna. (It worked so well, we used it for the rest of the trip!) 

We were well rested and well fortified with supplies when we headed out at 10 on Saturday morning.

Heading South it gets Colder

Many of the "highways" in Australia have names, in addition to numbers. When we left Purple Pear, we got on highway 84 heading west, also called the Golden Highway. The scenery had completely changed over from sub-tropical to eucalypt forest/coast, now to a much dryer, Mediterranean or central California look. Wineries, citrus groves and racehorse farms lined the roadsides.

Daylight began to fade when we had gotten as far as Dunedoo, where we camped for the night. Most towns, even the little ones, have caravan parks. This one was right on the highway, and as we set up camp we heard trucks passing by at regular intervals. The camp kitchen had a kettle though, so there would be no need to fire up the wood-burning camp stove for coffee/tea in the morning. We slept well, despite the chilly temps, and have no idea whether the road noise continued all night.

In the morning we really started to hit our stride as far as breaking camp. It reminded me of our Alaska trip last fall. We were packed up in what seemed like a few minutes, and on the road again. At Dubbo, we headed further south on Highway 20, the Sturt Highway. The drive was scenic and interesting, with lots of sheep, cows and horses in the fields. Traffic was thinner than along the coast, so I even took the wheel for a shift.

Note what side of the car I am sitting on...

We stopped for the night in a little town called Hay. We parked in the downtown area, where there were a few people about, and found a visitor Information kiosk with maps and the locations of a few caravan parks. We decided to get dinner in town. This is definitely beef country so we had steak and all the trimmings. When we rolled out of the restaurant it was dark, but we managed to find the Hay caravan park a little ways outside the town center. The guys at the office were funny and helpful, one of them even walked us down to our site on the grass. We really felt warmly welcomed. Unfortunately it would not be the most restful night of sleep, as other campers had a dog that barked and barked incessantly for hours into the night. I almost cried with relief when it finally stopped.

Narrower and narrower

Thursday May 10 was a long drive westward on the Sturt, to Mildura, finally leaving New South Wales and crossing briefly into Victoria before entering South Australia. Just across the SA border we stopped in Renmark, which is a little bigger than most towns we had been through recently. The Visitor Information center there was much larger, located on a river. We looked at the maps and found a few possible camping places, but after talking to the lady in the center, we decided on Lyrup Flats, a part of the Murray River National Park. We drove back out of town and turned down a desolate looking gravel road that had a sign indicating the park. The road got narrower and rougher and I admit, I had major doubts. But then we came to a self-registration kiosk with a map, so for $7 we got a site for the night. We took a photo of the map and headed down the still-narrower washboard gravel road.

Finally we came to some numbered sites along a beautiful riverbank. The numbers did not follow what was listed on the map, and we drove around a bit more trying to find the promised pit toilets and a group of numbered sites near them. There were a few occupied sites, with fishing gear apparent. We ended up parking the car and walking round to find a level site, which was not easy! But we did find a lovely place to camp for the night, as well as a very nice, new pit toilet facility. As big as my doubts were, the place was even more beautiful. We had a lovely dinner of flavored tuna, cheese and crackers on the riverbank, at our new table. 

Campsite

Beautiful riverbank

sunset on the Murray

Shawn has a bright idea! (For an awesome light diffuser.)

Smoky toast on the wood stove-it worked pretty well!

 Tea and toast on the wood stove in the morning, then it was on the road again!

Purple Pear Farm

Purple Pear Farm is run by a lovely couple, Kate and Mark, who Shawn had met during his 2010 internship. He had stayed in touch with Mark on Facebook. The farm was not currently accepting WWOOFers, but because they knew Shawn, and we were willing to camp, we were welcomed. We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, May 2, and were directed to a lovely little meadow to set up our tent.

Home at Purple Pear 

The 'normal' arrangement when WWOOFing is that you do whatever farm work is needed, in exchange for meals and lodging. In Australia, that often includes morning and afternoon tea, in addition to the regular 3 meals. In that way, Purple Pear was similar to Zaytuna, but that's about where the similarities end. Purple Pear is a working farm first, and a teaching facility second. The bulk of the daily work as well as steady income, comes from CSA (community supported agriculture) boxes that subscribers receive weekly. All of the produce is raised on the farm's Mandala beds, a series of  35 (I think) round garden beds interspersed with winding walking paths. There is hardly a straight line to be found in the garden, but it does not have a feeling of chaos; rather it is an amazingly beautiful and peaceful place.

Not the best pic of the mandala garden

Our first days' work was not to be in the Mandalas, however. Sunday May 6 was International Permaculture Day and would be a day of the farm being open to the public. So Shawn and I were given the task on Thursday of getting the small area beside the house, the "sub-tropical area" ready and up to snuff. This included weeding around the rocks surrounding an old banana circle that we would then replant with new banana trees, and weeding a bed near the gates that had been badly overgrown with weeds and running grasses, as well as general cleanup. It was fun to be able to work together on a small contained project, where we could figure things out with little risk of making mistakes, and easily see the results of our efforts.

banana circle

On Friday our job was to tidy up the backyard gardens. These beds had once been used for food production, but were mainly for pretty since most production had moved out to the mandalas. Though there was still an herb spiral near the kitchen door. (The herb spiral is one of my favorite garden icons.) The irregular-shaped beds were edged by bricks, and lovely glass and gravel paths wound around them. There was a chicken pen at the back (one of many distributed around the farm.) The paths, edges and beds had become overgrown, mostly with what was supposed to be there. There was a plum tree that had sent out an amazing number of suckers all over the beds, and those would need to be removed. Shawn and I again got to work together, decide how to best do things, and see our results quickly. I discovered yet another 'favorite' garden tool, the stirrup hoe. We moved plants to the bed in the tropical area, trimmed, weeded and cleaned up the beds, and I got to clean up and plant a couple new things in the herb spiral. The blisters we got today were certainly worth it.

Backyard and the pesky Plum tree

Beds and paths

Herb Spiral! 

More of the beautiful paths

Ordinarily, meals and tea were had on the veranda, dinner was usually in the dining room of Mark and Kate's house. Friday evening, however, we accompanied them to a Soup Dinner at the local Steiner School. There was a music program and dancing and many delicious homemade soups. We met some lovely people, and I learned that drinking fountains were called BUBBLERS at least in some parts of Australia! (Those of you from the WI hinterlands will understand my glee.)

Saturday was a major "get ready" day in anticipation of nobody-knew-how-many visitors. One of the tasks Shawn and I were charged with was making a sign for the main table. We had some thin plywood form a packing carton, various tools including a skill saw, and some leftover paints and brushes. We decided to make the sign in the shape of a pear, and I drew several free hand until I came up with a shape that said "pear" instead of "kidney bean" or "failed circle." Shawn did the cutting and attaching of the stand/bracing and I was in charge of the painting and lettering. It came out pretty good I think!

Sunday was the big day, and though nobody knew what to expect, things turned out well. Kate had baked goodies and made a huge pot of coffee and hot water for tea. There was also a big pot of pumpkin soup for lunch. Visitors came at a regular pace and the "self guided tour" that Mark had made (signs labeling the various permaculture features of the farm) was great. (I took it myself!) A nice highlight was a visit from a couple who had taken the PDC at Zaytuna with me-- Kirrilee and Mike. I remembered that they lived near Newcastle, and had wondered if they would come by. It was nice to see some familiar faces, and the feeling that the World was a little bit smaller was welcome.

The weekend also saw the big Super Moon, that was, due to perigee and fullness, supposed to be 30% brighter than a "regular" moon. It *was* incredibly bright-- so bright that we were able to take some pics using just the tripod and a longer exposure. Note the stars in the background!

Monday and Tuesday morning, we worked in the mandala gardens...clearing, weeding, planting, and moving one of the Chook Domes that they used to allow the chickens to prepare beds for planting. It was peaceful and pleasant work...except for getting bitten by Green Ants-- Shawn disturbed a nest of them, and they got into his pants and bit his legs. I don't know how he dealt with that, as when I got chomped by ONE< ont he palm of my hand, it felt like an ice pick was rammed through my hand for about 2 hours, I kid you not. Yikes. By late morning Tuesday my lower back was aching so much I could not finish planting our assigned bed. I retired to the tent early and we started breaking camp a little while later. Early Tuesday afternoon we left Purple Pear behind, and embarked on the second leg of our amazing journey...