Day 6 25/015/2013 Innaminka to Deon's Lookout (near Betoota)
Up at dawn,(more howling dingoes), with the setting moon like a searchlight in the sky. Cold and clear. We packed up pretty quickly...except for the pop-up dunny tent.....that defeated us and we had to lie it flat on the bed, with Dave vowing to throw it out at the earliest opportunity! Drove the 6km to Innaminka to get fuel, (and we hoped a bacon and egg roll....sadly not), and decided to avail ourselves of the quaintly named 'Public Ablutions' to have a hot shower. $2 for 3 minutes..... and don't try putting more money in, in order to get a longer shower......it just switches off and doesn't come back on for 5 mins.....a girl could seriously freeze standing around wet for that long......so I didn't get to put conditioner on...and I wasted $2!!!!!! On the way to town we saw three very handsome dingoes on the side of the road plus a flock of what must have been hundreds of Corellas.
We stopped for breakfast just past Nappa Merrie Station. Discovered the Anderson plug had become detached. This is the plug which charges the batteries on the trailer when the car is moving. Fortunately we have a solar panel on the roof of the trailer so we should be ok until we can get it fixed....maybe in Alice Springs. The road today varied from sand to corrugated gravel, good gravel, red dirt, yellow dirt and a few very short sealed sections. The landscape varied from sand to gibber plain, to scrub, to sand dunes and Jump-Up (Mesa) country. Cattle changed from mainly Black Angus to Brahman.
We met Mark and Michael travelling in the opposite direction. (We were on a coffee break and they stopped to check that we were ok). They worked for Drillsearch.... a company which looked for shale oil in the region. They told us that the road was 'good' and also mentioned a 'free camp' spot called Deon's Lookout......" You'll be on top of the plateau with great views and I guarantee you'll be the only ones there" said Mark! He was right about the great views..we were on top of a Mesa with a 360 degree vista, but we weren't the only ones there! A very nice couple with a caravan had already arrived. However there was lots of space, and anyway it was good to have the company. It was windy and cold with lots of flies, (we had encountered them everywhere today), but we, (Dave), had done enough driving for the day......there had been more tricky sections of track requiring lots of concentration, so we made camp, even though it was only early afternoon.
We decided to spend some time trying to collapse the dunny tent. As we were in the process, a young French couple arrived and decided that they wanted to 'give it a go'. We all spent a very hilarious 30 mins trying to collapse the thing. We practically sent the couple on their way, but they wouldn't give up. The guy was reading the instructions and translating them into French for his girlfriend, but in the end, they did it!!!! We wanted to give the tent to them....they,(unsurprisingly), said "no thanks". They declined a cup of tea, and headed in the direction of Windorah. We are never putting the dunny tent up again!!!
It was a beautiful sunset, and once again a really full moon to provide lots of light. No-one else arrived and the only sounds we heard all night was the howling wind!!!!