June 22 to July 3 09

Monday 22 June 09

We left Copley at 8.45 am to go to Arkaroola which is part of the Flinders Ranges but the map also says Gammon Ranges so it is a bit confusing.

We stopped for a short visit at Iga Warta. The impresive rock carving at the entrance is actually moulded fibreglass.

This is an aboriginal shop and appears to be a camping spot for tourists, with a gorge. The shop wasn’t open and as we didn’t have a lot of time so we couldn’t explore the area. We took a couple of photos and carried on along the track.

We drove through the Aboriginal township of Nepabunna which the people can be justifiably proud of. It was well laid out beautifully kept and quite picturesque.

Past this we came to Italowie Gorge. A really lovely spot which would have been great for a picnic stop but again we didn’t have time.

We arrived at Arkaroola at 11.30 am with an hour to spare before our Ridge Top Tour began.

We wandered around the immediate vicinity and took some photographs but we again did not have time to go to any of the other areas shown on the local maps.

The Ridge Top Tour was fantastic and in some places quite hair raising. There were 11 of us plus the driver. We were packed into the back of an open 4x4, 5 on one side and 5 on the other facing each other. The other man was in the front (lucky bugger).

I think it was a good job we couldn’t move because that stopped us flying up and down the seat as we went up and down the hills, some of which were really steep.

Taking photos other than when we stopped was impossible but the views were magnificent.

There were three stops on the route, the last one being at Sillers Lookout.

This is at the top of a particularly steep hill and once at the top you get lovely views of the surrounding ranges and the flat land in the distance where there are Uranium mines operating.

We have been surprised at the number of mines in South Australia. We thought most of the mining and gas and oil was in Western Australia but this is not the case. SA has copper, coal, iron, uranium, gold, gas and oil as well as plenty of small mines with other minerals such as talc.

We had tea and lamingtons at Sillers Lookout and then the trip back was even more scary because the driver, Sharpy, was in a hurry to be back on time. He was an Aboriginal and he gave us some interesting information about the local people and told us one of the dream time stories. He pointed out one mountain which he claimed had never been under water and was the oldest rock formation in Australia. He did say how old but I couldn’t write it down and forgot what he said.

We got back to Arkaroola at 5.30 pm and because we had left Foxy in the caravan we had to drive back to Copley. We got back about 7.30 feeling like our eyes were hanging out on stalks after spending the whole journey watching for horses and kangaroos. We saw nothing.

The following morning we discovered that we had a flat tyre.

Tuesday 23 June 09

The morning was spent sorting out the tyre – getting it patched. We decided that we would take the Strezlecki Track out to Innamincka so we needed to get at least one tyre replaced. The local man in Copley wanted $400.00 for a Bridgstone Dueler, and when we asked about other breeds they were also $400.00. We phoned Leigh Creek and they had a Bridgestone Dueler which was brand new but had been on a rim as a spare. He sold it to us for $280.00. Some shopping for the trip was next and that was about it for the day apart from making lists of what we would need to take with us to Innamincka.

Wednesday 24 June 09

Today we spent the whole day sorting out camping gear for the trip to Innamincka because we don’t want to subject the caravan to 465kms each way of graded road. Particularly as we have no idea of the condition of the track. We brought a tent, etc, with us for just this sort of trip. The caravan park owners do not charge for storing the caravan out in the back blocks. We had to take some stuff off the roof rack and store this in the van and take some stuff out of the van and put on the roof rack. I had some trouble getting Barry to give me a bit of space in the roller drawers for some food but I did get some in the end. The Engel was already full of frozen meat and fresh vegetables so I only had to add the milk, butter, cheese etc. It will be cold in the desert so we need to make sure we have plenty of bedding, especially under the airbed because the cold comes up through the bed and makes it really uncomfortable.

There is no Autogas at Leigh Creek or Copley so we will have to pick some up at Lyndhurst where the Strzelecki Track starts.

Thursday 25 June 09

Today we drove almost all the way to Innamincka. It was raining for all of the morning. Not hard but irritating and it made it difficult to stop at the first camp site that the map showed on the track. This did not matter because we couldn’t find it anyway. The next camping stop showing on the map said no dogs so we couldn’t stop there. According to the map there were no other camp stops on the route so that meant we had to push through to Innamincka. Fortunately we found another camp spot about 70kms short of Innamincka shortly after passing the Moomba gas and oil plant, and as it was 4.00pm we stopped there. Coming across an industrial plant in the middle of nowhere created an interesting change of scenery.

The track did not have a great deal to see, just sand dunes and low scrub in places. There were a few trees where creeks crossed the desert but they were few and far between. The sand was mostly a creamy white with some reddish brown now and again. The actual track went from really good to pretty ordinary with three patches of bitumen about 6kms long. There were several places where track crews were grading the road and fortunately the bad sections were short. Setting up the tent that we got back from Colleen and Craig (we had given them this tent several years ago but it was a bit small for them and still good enough for us and as we wanted a tent that was light and wouldn’t take up too much room this was good enough). Of course that first night we discovered all the things that we had forgotten to pack. Fortunately nothing that we couldn’t improvise without but irritating just the same.

Friday 26 June 09

Moved on into Innamincka where the final 10km of track became diabolical and covered in loose stones, all waiting to add to the profits of one and only tyre repair place in town.

The town only consists of a Hotel/Motel, trading post, laundrette, tyre repair and six houses. Although there are toilets and hot showers opposite the Trading Post.


The campsite in the Town common (dustbowl) alongside the Cooper Creek was quite good and only $5 a night. There are other campsites further along the creek at $15 a night but they are no different to the town site with no facilities apart from toilets, but run by the conservation mob instead of the shire.

The explorers Burke and Wills who travelled from Melbourne to the Gulf Of Carpenteria both died near Innamincka. They, plus a man called Adam who died before they reached the Gulf and King were the only 4 who travelled on from Cooper Creek near Innamincka to go to the Gulf. They left the rest of the party in a fort they had built at what is now called the "Dig Tree" with orders to wait no more that 4 months for their return. The remaining party waited 17 weeks and they finally left the same day Burke and Wills returned. There seems to be a series of errors that followed resulting in the deaths of Burke and Wills and King being rescued by Aborigines who kept him alive for 5 months before he was rescued. There is an official Burke and Wills web site which gives a great deal of the history and tries to correct some of the sensational stories that surround the expedition.

Prior to setting up our camp we drove 69km out to the ‘Dig Tree’ where the food and water was buried for Burke and Wills, should they return. This was along side the Cooper Creek and was the first sight we had of this creek. We are quite lucky to see it in full flood as this does not happen every year and is dependent on the rain in Queensland. This was a reasonable track once you got past the first 10km out of town, and once the Queensland border was reached the road was bitumen. We can now claim to have been to Queensland, albeit, only just.

The road from the bitumen to the ‘Dig Tree’ was worse than the Innamincka town roads.

On the way out after lunch we did managed to successfully shred the tyre that had been repaired in Copley.

On the way back to Innamincka we turned off again to check out the place where Bourke died.

Some of the views of the Cooper Creek are quite spectacular.

Burke and Wills died in separate places along the creek and according to the signs Wills died alone. Burke still had King with him who was rescued by Aborigines and he lived with them for five months until he was found and taken back to Melbourne. This is obviously how they know so much about the expedition and what went wrong. I would be interested to read the book and find out much more about this doomed expedition to get to the Gulf of Carpentaria. I know there was a reward offered for the first man to reach there but I don’t know why. I know it was important that the residents of Victoria learn more about the interier of Australia. Aparanently we now no more about outer space than the Victorian's knew about the interier of Austalia at that time.

On re-entry into Innamincka we called into the tyre place to discover they were only open from 8am to 9am, so we set up camp and promised to visit the tyre mob in the morning.

Our campsite by the Creek was well away from everybody else, and therefore, quiet with views of the birdlife in the trees on the opposite bank. Until about 6.00 pm when a mob of campers moved in fairly close to us and proceeded to wake the dead until about midnight. I slept through most of it but Barry was awake until well after they stopped.

The Creek is currently in full flow at quite a rapid pace.

Saturday 27 June 09

Visited the tyre mob and as expected the array of 17 inch rim tyres was not great so I settled for a reasonable second hand one, which gave us one new spare and one second hand spare.

We used the town hot showers at $2 for 4 minutes and then returned to camp and spent the remainder of the day as a rest day.

We sat by the creek and watched the birds, particularly a Whistling Kite who flew over head several times and was really graceful. I watched him on one occasion as he tucked his/her wings back and dove into the water. He came out with nothing so I gather he didn’t get the fish. I was surprised that he could see anything in the water because it was very muddy looking obviously with all the sand it was bringing downstream from Queensland.

In the early evening a huge mob of white cockatoos flew over several times making enough noise to wake the dead. They settled on several trees around us and then flew off and settled again but where they actually roosted was anybody’s guess.

There was a dead tree near our camp and on one occasion there were cockatoos, galahs, a kite, several small black and white birds and some crows all on this tree together. It really did look quite spectacular. We also saw some pretty little red and green birds but we didn’t get a close enough look to see what they were and a photo was out of the question as they were too quick.

Sunday 28 June 09

We drove out of town over the creek causeway which is quite a sight, and then on to Coongie Lake which is a permanent lake although nothing like as large as Lake Eyre. There are several other smaller lakes around some of which are permanent and some only fill when the Cooper Creek is in full flood.

On the way in we stopped for lunch at the remains of an old station outhouse that was presumably used by the mustering team. The outstation building has been done up by the Toyota Land Cruiser Club of SA and was very useful for lunch in the kitchen area as the flies were very friendly. There was also another building with a sign that said Meat House which was interesting. There was a small lake at this point and several camp sites a little bit further down the track that were also beside this small lake (or possibly this is part of the Cooper Creek).

The lakes are the end result of Cooper Creek, and as some of them are permanent we had expected a lot of birdlife but in fact it was very limited and therefore a bit disappointing. (When these lakes fill Cooper Creek carries on and fills Lake Eyre although most of the water that flows into Lake Eyre from Queensland comes from the Diamantina River. Lake Eyre also fills with local water occasionally)

However, the lake is quite impressive. I need to add here that Barry was disappointed, but I found the whole area absolutely fascinating and I saw quite a few birds although not necessarily a large variety. I got a lovely photo of a Whistling Kite.

Parts of the track in/out of the lake was excessively corrugated (the worst we have experienced) and we had an engine management light flash on and off on several occasions. On checking the manual this is a warning that the fuel filter may have water in it, but as it only happened on the badly corrugated sections of road it was assumed to be the possible cause.

Monday 29 June 09

As a precaution, the fuel filter was drained into a plastic bottle and checked for water, which proved negative, and therefore the corrugations must have been the problem.

We drove into Innamincka to take some photographs of the town and to visit the old nurses station that has obviously been done up and is being used as the head quarters of the Innamincka Regional Reserve.

We met a couple we had seen the day before at Coongie Lakes and chatted to them for a while. They had done some interesting trips and were interested in our trip up the Canning Stock Route as they intend doing that soon. They had travelled from Brisbane just using a tent.

Barry chatted to a man about the gas conversion who was interested because he is considering spending $14,000 converting his truck to gas and diesel. We were going to have lunch at the pub but it didn’t open for another half hour and as the Trading Post was not set up for lunch either we drove back to the camp site to make our own. On stepping out of the car we heard a hissing noise and sure enough we had another puncture. I was feeling quite guilty because I had talked Barry into not getting new tyres in Port Augusta because there is still some tread on the tyres we have and they would be fine for sealed roads. Not, as Barry had said, for graded roads though. Particularly really bad ones like those around Innamincka. Barry plugged this one, a first for him and it appeared to work. Not that we have given it the ultimate test back on the car. Now we have two new tyres on the back of the car and two fairly ordinary spares as well as two tyres with a bit of tread on the front. Hopefully this will see us through the rest of the graded roads we will be doing in the Flinders Ranges. I spoke to one guy who said his mate had 4 punctures in 2 days but I think he must have been driving like a maniac, or he had really ordinary tyres which is our problem.

After lunch we drove round to look at some of the Regional Reserve camp sites which looked pretty much the same as the ones we were using in the Town Common. Unless you had bought an annual desert parks pass this was an expensive way to camp at $15 per night. If you had travelled from Birdsville or Oodnadatta and spent a couple of weeks out in the desert this was not worth getting. We looked at Wills grave site (I say grave site but both Burke and Wills were buried in Melbourne and these are actually the sites where they died) and also at the site where it is claimed that King was found by Aboriginals and cared for, for five months before being rescued by a search party sent out from Melbourne to find out what had happened to the four men who had left the main party at Innamincka to travel on to the Gulf of Carpentaria. These were intrepid men who opened up the interior of Australia searching for inland seas and telegraph routes etc.

We had by this time just about exhausted what there was to see and do in and around Innamincka and I for one will never forget the experience. Hopefully we will be able to come back again one day and do some of the other routes through to Birdsville and Oodnadatta as well as crossing the Simpson Desert which we are told is quite an experience. I think though that we need an off road camper or van for this as tenting is getting a bit primitive for us these days.

Tuesday 30 June 09

We packed up the tent and headed into town for a much needed hot shower. We had been making do with strip washes in the tent and I needed to wash my hair and get properly clean. The wind had started to come up during the night and while I was finishing off my shower Barry sat and watched a dust storm blow through the town. Showers done, and fuel we had picked up the day before, we left Innamincka to head for Cameron Corner where Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia meet. I was interested to see this little spot and stand with both feet in three states which we were told you could do. What else is there we have no idea. Our Camps Australia book does not show any camping spots there. As we were driving the wind was getting worse and the dust storm was starting to make it difficult to see where we were driving. There were several occasions when Barry had to pull up or slow right down to a crawl to see where he was going. We have never seen anything like this before and were not impressed. Barry started to get really concerned about diverting to Cameron Corner as this was another 200 kms and we had no idea what the track was like or what would be there when we got there. We thought there was a good possibility that we would find it impossible to put the tent up and cook in the wind and dust storm and we had no idea how long it might last. We decided to give Cameron Corner a miss and head back to Copley. I was disappointed but I could see Barry’s point. Maybe we will get there one day in the future.

We had decided to stop on the way back past Moomba to get a photograph of this huge gas and oil facility but when we got to the lookout it was as if the facility did not exist. We could see nothing at all. We did manage to stop at Montecalina Bore which is an artesian bore and looked just like a small lake in the desert. Yet another tree absolutely covered with white cockatoos. The tree looked like it was covered with blossom. We could not stay here because this was the camp site I mentioned earlier that did not allow dogs, although we could not see why.

We arrived back at Copley at about 5.30 pm and picked up the van and put it back on a powered site in the caravan park. We then went for dinner at the Leigh Creek Hotel which is in Copley. The whole place is really confusing as the original town of Copley was called Leigh Creek and there was a Leigh Creek post office and a Leigh Creek general store. Later the town was renamed Copley and the post office and general store changed their names to suit. The pub however has always retained its original name. As a new town of Leigh Creek was built around 1980 this has added to the confusion. This town has a Leigh Creek Tavern which is also a motel and cabin park. So you could be forgiven for not knowing where the hell you are in this neck of the woods.

Wednesday 1 July 09

The morning was spent washing. Barry took a gas bottle to be filled and the rest of the day was spent cleaning the caravan and sorting the Nissan out. Taking the camping gear off the roof rack and storing it back in the van, moving all the food back into the van and putting the stuff that we had put in the van, such as the golf clubs and the dogs play pen, while we were away back on the roof rack. This left us with no time left to do anything else but download the photographs we had taken in Innamincka and drove to Leigh Creek for some shopping.

Thursday 2 July 09

This day was basically doing nothing. I was messing about with cross sums and Barry was updating the blog I think, adding photos to what we had written before.

Friday 3 July 09

After a very lazy morning I prepared a lamb roast and vegies to cook in the Dream Pot. You brown the floured lamb in a pan and drop it into an oven bag; you do the same to the floured potatoes and carrots and add them to the bag. You then seal the bag really tight and put it into water in the inner pot of the Dream Pot. This you bring to the boil and boil slowly for 20 minutes and then you put this into the Dream Pot and leave it for a minimum of 3 hours. It turned out really well. The potatoes and carrots were not quite like roast vegies but they were still really tasty and not a bit soggy which I had expected.

While this was cooking we drove to look at Aroona Dam which had been closed for road grading when we were in Copley before. The actual dam is quite small but the lake was surprisingly big and quite picturesque in yet another section of the Flinders Ranges. The dam supplies water to the towns of Copley and Leigh Creek and gives them more than adequate supplies. I left Barry in the car and did some extra trekking around the dam to get some more photos of where the lake appeared to go off around a corner. This extra walk was well worth the effort. Barry had worn shorts and was really cold so he wasn’t interested in leaving the car.

We carried on down the road to look at the historic town of Beltana. This proved to be yet another town largely ruins and a few buildings that were still occupied. It didn’t inspire us to get out of the car and take photos so we just drove around it. There were quite a few other tourists walking around and if Barry had been more suitably dressed for warmth, we may have got out of the car and walked around too. I could have but nothing really called out for a photograph.

The drive out to Beltana was quite interesting, the hills looked as if they had been blown there like sand dunes. Quite a different formation.