16th August - 20th August 2012. Coober Pedy to Farina

Before we left the town of Coober Pedy we visited Faye's Underground Home. This was made by a lady called Faye Nayler beginning in the 1930's and dug out a couple of rooms herself and then 2 of her friends helped and the 3 ladies then made it into a 3 bedroom home. It took Faye 10 years to build the dining room alone when we digging it out herself. It's interesting learning about the pioneering women on our travels. What amazing women! In fact, I've just finished reading a couple of books on these women of the outback. Makes me realise that really our problems are tiny and the stupid, piddly things we stress about are just that - stupid and piddly. I hope I keep this philosophical way of thinking and everyone has permission to biff me one if I don't!

Anyway, back to the travels. There is a dirt road called William Creek Road which is 166km and goes from Coober Pedy to …… .guess …… William Creek. The population is 12 so not a large place (understatement). The pub has signs and business cards form all the travellers over the years. It's here you can get a scenic flight over Lake Eyre. We didn't. The small plane that we took over the Bungle Bungles last year has cured David of flying in anything less than the A380 now. To say there is absolutely nothing out there would be overselling it. I thought we had been through some barren land before but I guess we are in the real desert now. Once on the Oodnadatta Track at William Creek, we had 202 km to go to Marree and we had planned to take a few days to just chill out and take our time. The weather, however, had other ideas. It was so windy! We camped on our first night as unpaid guests on the largest cattle station in the world - Anna Creek Station - one of Sidney Kidman's properties. The wind drops at night and we felt like we were the only people left on the planet. Just silence and stars. The stars are really spectacular too. The Oodnadatta Track follows the original Ghan Railway which was closed down in 1980 and dismantled. The new Ghan was moved further west and follows the Stuart Highway. There are old railway ruins along the way which are interesting and some hot springs fed by the Great Artesian Basin underground. Once we got to South Lake Eyre Lookout, the wind almost blew us over. The view was pretty spectacular though. So huge it was hard to get the full appreciation of it with the camera. At present it is about 30% full and would've been nice to see at it's capacity. Due to the strong winds we pushed on again to Marree. Now Marree, at camel cup time would be good to visit but the other 364 days ……?? David spoke with a tour coach driver and asked him for recommendations of free camping in the area. He told us about Farina - about 55 km down the road. What an oasis!! We camped on grass!! The first grass we'd seen for weeks. Farina is a real ghost town with ruins from times gone by. At it's peak in the early 1900's, there were 300 people here. Now it's just ruins and a grassy campground. We certainly settled in here and stayed for 3 nights. They even had flushing toilets and a hot shower heated by a donkey. Not the animal variety. It's a wood fire under the tank - just start a small fire wait 20 minutes and bingo - hot, steamy shower. We had arranged to meet Lance at Marree on Monday so we've left a sign for him on the track and hopefully he'll pull in on the way to Marree. Otherwise it's just a short drive up the road on Monday to catch him there. It's very hard without mobile phone reception. We certainly take a lot of things for granted.