From Coober Pedy, we played "spot the cow" or "spot the dead cow" to pass the time. Pretty boring drive, except for a couple of lakes when we got closer to Pimba. We also detoured into Woomera before parking at Pimba for the night. Woomera was interesting - a town developed to house/service people working with testing rockets in the 1960s and 70s. There was some really good information at the visitors centre and displays of recovered rocket parts and fighter jets...

The drive back to Coober Pedy from Alice Springs was pretty boring, but we tried a variation on an old game to entertain us. Instead of "spot the emu" or "spot the goat", we played "spot the desert pea". Unfortunately there was only one patch of them, about 70kms north of Marla. So that game didn't last very long. We stopped overnight at Marryat Creek rest area again and met some nice people from Kingston in South Australia who we might catch up with again later....

Coober Pedy We were sooooo glad to see Coober Pedy!!! After surviving the gravel/sand/potholes/rock-boulders of the Oodnadata and William Creek tracks, the bitumen was a welcome sight. But Coober Pedy is a complex town and perhaps not the most welcoming at first glance. Dirty, dusty, shop windows barred up and dogs roaming the streets. The caravan park we stayed at locked their gates (and therefore us inside) from 10pm to 6am. It looks like a WILD wild west town...

Oodnadatta Track - Marree to William Creek 2nd August 2012 -'Blame Everything on Alix Day' So if anything is going to go majorly wrong, it should happen today..... We leisurely packed up the bus at Marree in the morning before getting some fuel (at $1.95 per litre!) and hitting the Oodnadatta Track, with a little but of apprehension because we didn't know what the gravel road ahead would be like. It wasn't long before we stopped to check out some salt pans and...

Marree and Lake Eyre After a sigh of relief at hitting the bitumen again, we made our way north from Paranchila to Leigh Creek and stopped there to get the leaky tyre fixed (yes, we got another puncture on a Sunday but couldn't do anything about it until we got out of the national park). Leigh Creek and Copley are pretty towns and shortly after that we saw the coal mine from the road. Then it was onto unsealed road again after Lyndhurst and no other stops until ...