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 views of Lake Eyre South. We also amused ourselves by trying to get photos of the Garmin displaying our lowest altitude for the trip - and managed minus 12 meters above sea level! We stopped at Coward Springs and dipped our feet in the artesian mineral spa and checked out some more railway ruins - the old railway has been a constant sight along the trip north since Peterborough with lots of memorials and Old Ghan stories about railway workers and Afghan Cameleers since Paranchila. Other highlights were passing through the Dog Fence (which is quote: "very bloody long") and seeing relics of the Overland Telegraph. A lowlight was the "sculpture park" at Plane Henge which was a bit freaky. We had another sigh of relief when we finally made it to William Creek - 204km from Marree and took us about 6 hours on the very long and rough road! There are some more relics here from the Old Ghan railway, but also some old rockets which might seem strange but were fired from the Woomera testing area in the 1970s. Kent was quite happy to look at something other than railway museum stuff! We have also read quite a bit about Sidney Kidman and his station Anna Creek, the world's largest cattle station, which is in this area. So the mix of early pastoralist and railway history along the Oodnadatta Track has been interesting. Tomorrow we leave the Old Ghan line and head west to Coober Pedy - 166km of gravel road before we see bitumen again, yay!!!
And for the record...nothing bad happened that we could blame on Alix this year, apart from the cord to the fridge rattling apart over the rough road. But nothing has spoiled and Kent has fixed the plug Macguyver-Style!