The Oonadatta track has reopened this morning – but only to the turn off to Roxby Downs. We are told that there is no chance that the road from William Creek to Halligan Bay (the place to view north lake Eyre) will open in the foreseeable future – even if the remainder of the oonadatta track opens to William Creek in the next few days.
In view of that snippet of information we decide to travel to a campsite at Mulcoorina Home stead for the night. The homestead campground is about a 60km drive from Marree – but given the 4wd nature of the road it takes us more than 2 hours to get there. It is baking hot (about 38degrees with bush flies everywhere trying to investigate the inside of your nose… ears…… mouth…… - thank heavens for fly nets on the hat). We are camped beside a beautiful water hole on the property. There are birds galore, cattle, fish jumping out of the water. The waterhole is fed by an artesian spring. Some really deep swimming holes – some areas are hot where the springs feed in at 56 degrees. In the afternoon we do a 4WD 92k return trip to Lake Eyre South and the southern most point of Lake Eyre North over sand dunes – it was amazing and beautiful. I am so glad we got to see Lake Eyre – walking on the salt crust which cracks underfoot; doing the obligatory taste test (yes it is salty), and finding the “lake Eyre dragons” which are only found on lake Eyre.
One surprising thing has been that I hadn’t expected to see the desert so green and muddy – not sure what all this “arid / dry” business is that everyone was telling us about!!!!
The property we stayed at overnight also has the dog fence running through it – so had to take a photo of Ethan opening the gate for us. (Ethan is our resident expert gate opener through all the properties we drive through).
