Dalhousie Springs, South Australia to Chamber's Pillar, Northern Territory
After a wonderful hour-long soak in the main pool at Dalhousie Springs, we head north into the Northern Territory, driving in the old railbed of the Ghan towards Alice Springs. The countryside changes too: from the sparse rocky tablelands and stony plains around Dalhousie, to rolling hills covered with grass and mulga (acacia), and finally densely vegetated red sand dunes, with large 15m tall desert oaks (casaurina) in groves.
And we've decided that There is No Outback after an unpleasant lunch at Lambert's Center--the absolute center of Australia.
Chris tells me the car alarms kept on going off last night at Dalhousie springs from the other fifty cars that were in the campground--along with the various 'beep beep' of cars locking and unlocking. I didn't hear these annoying intrusions--I had fallen asleep about a minute after getting in my sleeping bag. What I did hear was the windstorm that kicked up at 3:20am... one of the rain fly clips was unattached, so it flapped like a pigeon on speed for ten minutes before I got up and took care of its nagging.
It was still windy when we woke about a half hour before sunrise, with dust blowing around and the other campers in the campground already breaking camp. Gee, thanks. We still had a morning cup of tea and Dick Smith's Bush Breakfast cereal, then headed to the springs. Ahhhh... they were nice. They hadn't cooled at all in the night, and we were the only ones there. It was great; we grabbed some of the inner tubes and floated for an hour. Only as we were getting ready to get out did some of the other campers join us. Real pleasant.
We considered staying another day, the springs were that nice... but we thought it was time to move on a bit. I wanted to see Chamber's Pillar, a 50 meter tall sandstone column on the way to Alice Springs. So we drove north, through Mt Dare campgrounds (verdict: OK, more shade than your typical roadhouse campground, good bar and pool table); then on to New Crown where we paid $1.31 per liter of diesel. Ouch... but they are remote. And friendly.
After New Crown, we headed to Finke. Many of the guidebooks say "You can get fuel in Finke, but don't bet on it at all--you won't find the store ever open." Chris and Sue from our Cape York trip said "Finke is a hole." Uh, yep. Finke is pretty bad. It's an old Ghan railroad siding that was taken over by the local Aboriginal group in the mid-1980's, and now looks very depressed, with dogs and litter and broken cars. Even the kids playing in the streets didn't return our waves.
The road got worse after Finke, much worse. It followed the track bed of the Old Ghan railroad line. Corrugations that shook out my fillings were the name of the game! It took a good three hours to reach Maryvale, described as a homestead but more like an Aboriginal community.
Then another hour (44km) to Chamber's Pillar... we got the very last campsite just after sunset. Then a quick dinner and early bed.
Weird Wildlife Sighting
A very cool small flock of mulga parrots, just outside Marysvale. They were fast--and flew right in front of the car for about a minute, keeping up with us at 60km/h!