CURTIN SPRINGS / MARLA SOUTH / BREAKAWAYS

We all slept reasonably well at the South Marla camp site. A little bit of traffic noise from the highway but overall not too bad.


Got organised, had breakfast, packed up camp and off we went again. We stopped at Marla where Raymond got fuel and we got coffee. Marginal improvement over Cadney Park but not a lot in it.

The weather today is pretty good.

Next stop was Agnes Creek where we stretched our legs and explored the area for a while. Agnes Creek is a very large creek but also a very dry creek, notwithstanding the reports of pretty significant rain over the previous week in that area.

From Agnes Creek we went on to cross the SA/NT border and on to Kulgera where we stopped for lunch. A very busy little place. We thought about getting fuel but the diesel was $1.75 / litre so we thought we would take a chance and see what the prices were like further on. We made sandwiches and had a cool drink, checked the maps and on the road again.

Next stop was Erldunda (which is the turn off to Uluru). We decided to get fuel at Erldunda and paid $1.75/litre anyway. I was going to buy a “Wot Camels?” cap but they wanted $21.90 for it and I figured that was pretty expensive, so Royce and I had an ice cream instead. (query – ‘wot diet?’).

We stopped a couple of times over the next leg of the journey and eventually reached Curtin Springs about 5.45pm. This was quite a long day’s travelling – all up approx 450km. The sun was shining and it was quite hot even with the air conditioner on, because we were travelling towards the sun and the heat coming through the front windscreen was a problem.

On the way to Curtin Springs we caught a glimpse of what we thought may have been Uluru but it turned out to be Mount Connor. We have no idea why Uluru is so well known and Mt Connor is almost unheard of but until we get to Uluru we cannot make any comparisons.

We set up in the free camp area in Curtin Springs last night and then moved to a powered site for today and tomorrow. Powered sites are $25 but at least you get power and water – unlike Coober Pedy where water had to be paid for separately! The diesel prices in Coober Pedy were a lot better ($1.37/litre) whereas at Curtin Springs the price is $1.97/litre.

Woke this morning to another beautiful, but quite hot day. By 11am the temperature was 30 degrees and it was continuing to warm up. We are now running our air conditioner because we were getting very hot and sweaty and we weren’t even doing anything to cause it!!!!

I discovered that I only have 1 t-shirt that fits comfortably but I am doing better than Royce who didn’t remember to pack any shorts so is having to continue wearing jeans.

We have no mobile phone service here at all and the only internet service costs $1 per 6 minutes. Needless to say we will use that very sparingly!

We are having a chill-out / do nothing day today and planning to go to the Olgas and Uluru tomorrow.

SOUTH OF MARLA

Beautiful blue sky at Coober Pedy this morning. We packed up to leave the caravan park by 10am but couldn’t leave CP straight away as Raymond needed to get his car tyres aligned better. He took his car to the workshop where the chap said he would try to get it done by 1pm.

We filled up the water tanks and emptied the toilet then parked the caravan and the 4 of us went for another walk around CP. We had a coffee in a small restaurant (very nice cappuccino) then browsed some of the opal shops. We found one called John & Yokas which was really good and bought a few bits and pieces (but not opal). One of the things we bought was two lumps of zebra stone. They had a number of pieces which had been sanded back to a beautifully smooth finish but we bought the unfinished pieces of stone and Royce will try his hand to sand them. They look fabulous when finished. We also bought a couple of small board mounted prints signed by the artist.

Once the car was ready we headed to the supermarket to get some shopping done, made some lunch then departed CP.

First stop was at a rest site about 1 hr from CP. We just stretched our legs, got a bit of fresh air then continued on. We stopped at Cadney Park Roadhouse because they advertised coffee and cake for $4 and we thought that was a pretty good bargain! Not often we are right but we were wrong again. No cappuccino. No filtered coffee or anything except some very very cheap coffee in a jar, a hot water urn, milk in the fridge and for the sum of $3 you had the privilege of making your own! We thought the coffee smelt pretty ordinary so made a cup of tea – which was so-so. Raymond and Hazel decided to have a hot chocolate instead and didn’t end up drinking much of that. The piece of cake was reasonably fresh but that was about the only positive thing I can think of!

We drove about another 45km up the road and pulled into the South Marla Rest Area for the night. This is quite a large free camp site but it was already pretty crowded when we arrived and more came afterwards. We managed to find a reasonable spot a bit away from the rest and set up a small camp fire.

The night sky tonight is just spectacular! I tried to take some photos of it using the ‘starry sky’ setting on my camera but I think I must be doing something wrong. I need to read the instructions for that but I didn’t bring them with me.

Bedding down shortly (not much else to do) and we will head off tomorrow aiming for Curtin Springs (not far from Uluru).

I am having trouble uploading photos while on this WiFi setting so I may have to leave those and upload them at a later time.