marla to coober pedy

As it turns out today was possibly even more windy than yesterday and as the temperature wasn't as high we really noticed the wind chill on the bikes and although the distance was relatively short, the wind made it seem like forever.

The first stop was cadney homestead where it was nice and cosey and with our bottomless cups of tea, it would have been quite easy to stay there, out of the wind, for some time. However, after a change to warmer gloves and the donning of buffs, we were back into it. The wind was so strong that we were riding well and truly leaning to the right while try to stop our heads being pulled off. At one stage i noticed that even going around a left hand bend, we were still leaning to the right.

me out the front of cadney homestead

Sadly the landscape offered little in the way of protection as there was very little landscape. It was very big, very flat and very, very open. We stopped at a rest stop, which offered little more other than 2 rubbish bins and a small amount of shade, to take photos of the nothingness. Then it was off again for the final push to coober pedy.

two blokes, two bikes and bugger all else

About 40km out of coober pedy the mines start and so does the weird landscape. It looks like a sea of giant, sand coloured ant hills and there are signs everywhere warning of the dangers of falling down shafts or getting blown up.

the weird anthills outside coober pedy

We found where we were staying, across the road from one of the few working drive-ins that i know of, but had to wait for our unit to be cleaned. Apparently there had been a dust storm here yesterday and things were dirtier than usual. Once in, we changed an toddled off for a look around. Coober pedy really is a one product town, other than pubs and supermarkets, pretty much everything else has to do with opal. It's also very interesting in that a geat deal of the 3000 people that live here, live underground, so when you look at the place from a high vantage point, you only see parts of houses, the rest is buried.

After lunch it was time to do the tourist thing so we went to an old mine that had an old underground house attached. The mine was opened in 1916 when a 15 year old boy found opal while chasing a goanna down a hole. He sadly died when he was 20 and when you see how they had to work, it's suprising he made it that long. All the shafts were dug by hand and they were very narrow and very low and when they found opal it as painstakingly gouged out and that often meant that the shaft was only just big enough to wriggle through. Not ajob for claustaphobes.

me with my new found mate, marty the miner

The houses on the other hand, were quite spacious by comparison and if you needed an extra room, all you had to do was grab the pick. They were also really interesting because of the great colours everywhere and the textures of the walls and ceilings.

Then it wasoff to one of the high points in town to watch the sunset an to take photos of the big winch.

big man, big bucket

sunset coober pedy style

Tomorrow we are off to woomera which we are both very excited about, wal because he's never been there and he has a keen interest in things aeronautical, me because i used to live there and it holds many, many fond memories and possibly a few ghosts, we'll see.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-29.0046,134.7556&ll=-29.0046,134.7556&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

alice springs to marla

Well it was back onto the now all-to-familiar road out of alice but this time we were determined not return, well not by motorcycle and not in the next few weeks. Alice had been very good to us but it was nice to heading in the right direction again.

It was already pretty warm but the worst of it was that it was ridiculously windy, i mean stupidly windy. We rode almost all of the 475km leaning heavily to the right and feeling like someone was trying to rip our helmets off.

The landscape was the familiar orange and red sand, yellow spinifex and muted green shrubbery. However, this started to change after we passed the turn off to uluru and kata tjuta, it got flatter and hotter but no less windy. The yellow spinifex had given way to low shrubby thing that was a shade of grey. About 160km out of marla, near kulgera where we stopped for an incredibly windswept lunch, it staryted to change again, with some incredible rock outcrops, one looked remarkably like a miniature kata tjuta.

the kulgera pub, not that great a place

me, dead casual, at the border

As we got closer to marla there were these amazing little mesas popping up all over the place. It would have been great to stop and take photos but we would have been blown off our bikes.

the mesas outside marla

We pulled into marla at about 3.45 and checked into what i reckon is the best budget room we've had so far. Other than that there's probably not a lot going for marla but the people are nice though.

our room in marla

Tomorrow is a short hop to coober pedy which should be interesting and hopefully a lot less windy.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-27.3039,133.6234&ll=-27.3039,133.6234&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

yulara to alice springs

Aaaaaarrrrrrgggghhh!! what a day. i hate backtracking and today was a backtracking day.

It started off in the right direction, we were up before any sparrow had even thought about cracking, and off to uluru to do the base walk and watch the sun rise. The sun rise was a little less startling than it had been the previous morning but it was greatly enhanced by the presense of a stupendously large rock. Like i said, i don't think uluru is as fabulous as kata tjuta, but it is pretty bloody fabulous just the same and glowing in the early morning sun, it is pretty special.

After a very brisk walk around uluru it was back to the campsite for a half arsed breakfast, packing up and making frantic phone calls to motorcycle shops in alice to see if we could find replacements for our rear tyres which were completely shot. Mr metzler, if you're reading this, you suck! Your tyres were 2 weeks old and had only done 4000kms and they were copmpletely worn and had started to crack. Fortunately the big fella managed to find a place in alice that had the tyres that we wanted and they could fit that afternoon if we could be there by 3,00. However that meant a very rushed trip to cover the 450km as weren't leaving yulara until well after 10.00.

We managed to get to alice right on 3.00 and the guys from race motorcyles were great and had the new boots fitted in abouty 45 minutes. Then it was on to find accommodation, do washing and buy beer, sadly in that order.

Tomorrow it's off to marla which means backtracking our backtrack, uuuurrrrggghh. but at least we will be heading in the right direction.

cutrain springs to yulara

We were up at the crack of sparrows this morning and actually managed to be on the road ahead of schedule. Not sure what happened there but there you go. The surises here are just as spectacular as the sunsets and this morning's was no exeption, stunning oranges, reds and yellows bleeding into an intense idigo sky with a waning moon still hanging well over the horizon.

On this little section of road i noticed something i hadn't seen in a little over a week, clouds, not nasty ones, just nice white fluffy ones, breaking up the dazzlingly bright blue sky.

It's a relatively short trip from curtain springs to yulara but it seems longer because of the anticipation of that first glance of uluru. It is uluru that you see first, sitting, dark blue on the horizon, but only just. Kata tjuta appears very soon after that and the sight of both of these icons is really very special. Although you would think that the land is dead flat, it isn't, there a lots of little dips and valleys just waiting to steal that beautiful view from you, giving you tantalizingly short bursts.

We arrived at the yulara campsite at about 8.45 and were actually able to set up which was great as it meant we could leave a lot of stuff behind and travel with bikes much lighter and more easily secureed. Once set up we headed off, not in search of the incredible natural beauty that surrounds us, but food and coffee. Which we found, and they certainly found us, $30 for tea, coffee, 2 bacon and egg rolls and a bottle of water. Ow.

Now repleat we were off to kata tjuta some 80km from where we are staying. On the way we had our first wild camel experience so it was of course necessary to stop and take photos. After that we stopped at a viewing platform that was set off the road. As we walked onto the platform, the only other person there, a man in a hat, asked which one of us was morag's brother? The big fella casually said,”that would be him.” This stopped me in my tracks. Turns out this guy used to work with my sister and as he was going to be travelling in roughly the same direction, my sister told him to look out for us. And he did. So mo, peter says to say hello.

wal prepares to examine a camel

Riding into kata tjuta i started to notice these trees that looked like giant, green cotton buds. Skinny trunks with a mop droopy, shaggy foliage at the top. If victoria beckam looked like a tree, she would look like one of these.

Kata tjuta is astounding, it is considerably bigger that i imagined it to be, and i thought it would be pretty big, and it is breathtakingly beautiful.

kata tjuta from the viewing platform

There is a lot of attention paid to uluru, which, sure enough, is mindbuggering in its emensity, but there is something about curves and undulations, the textures and the pockets of vegetation growing in the most inaccessable places, that for me, makes kata tjuta truly awe inspiring.

kata tjuta

some of the flowers around kata tjuta

We left there and went briefly to uluru, which after having raved about kata tjuta, is still a stunningly beautiful place and the enormity of the it is difficult to comprehend. After the manditory photo, taken by yet another irish tourist who was not drunk and sadly neither was she naked (Oh well), it was back to yulara for some very late lunch, a bit of blog work and a very quick dip in the very cold but very refreshing pool.

By now it was time to jump abck on the bikes to shoot out to uluru to watch the sunset along with several hundred of our new best friends. It wasn't as spectacular as it could have been due to some cloud cover on the horizon which was nicely abscuring the sun.

i don't really think a caption is necessary

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-25.2375,130.9894&ll=-25.2375,130.9894&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

ormiston gorge to curtain springs

The night spent at ormiston was an interesting one. The night sky was truly spectacular, there were an obscene number of stars and the milky way was very clear indeed, so clear that at first glance it could easily have been mistaken for cloud. We retired early as there was nothing else to do and i set about writing up the days events. That done it was time to sleep but as we had no power, it meant that i couldn't use my breathing machine and therefore i snored like a chainsaw. this also means that i woke myself up at regular intervals and therefore don't get much in the way of a good nights sleep. There was also the great camelback incident, where i managed to roll onto my camelback in such a way for it to releasae enough water to wet my sleeping bag, so there i was at 3.30am wiping up water and trying to dry my bag. That done, just as i was drifting off to sleep, the dingos started howling, which is quite an eerie sound as it echoes around the gorge.

Given my snorage, i and anyone within a mile radius, didn't sleep very well, so it was very difficult to get up and get going. However, once we were going it was very much worth the effort. The riding was stupendous, the road was a gently undulating and meandering dream, the scenery breathtaking, the temperature ideal and all under a ridiculously big sky. The ride back to alice is possibly even more beautiful than the ride from alice.

the beautiful ranges on the road back to alice

Once in alice we booked accommodation in curtain springs for the night and uluru for the following night the took to the road once more bound for curtain springs.

Leaving alice the landscape changes again, the rocks and hills are no longer just red, there are layers of reds, oranges and yellows. The colour of the sand at the side of the road is mainly an orangy colour but it soon changes to a rich red dotted with clumps of yellow grass and muted green shrubs and trees. The hills are extremely craggy and weathered and clearly express just how ancient this land is.

We stopped for lunch at stuarts well where we were entertained by dinky the sing dingo. Dinky climbs onto the piano keyboard, makes some random noise then howls along to it. It is kinda fun and the other folks really did seem to enjoy it.

dinky the singing dingo

After lunch it was on to curtain springs and our resting place for the evening. Not fafr from, and in full view of curtain springs, is mt conner, which i had never heard of but is truly spectacular. It is a huge mesa that stands all alone in a vast plain of yellow grass and low scrub. It is so large it can be seen from over 50km away annd is often mistaken for uluru. Dinner at curtain springs was like dinner at so many of the places we have stayed, utterly brilliant, beautifully cooked steak and excellent dessert, all washed down with a tasty, if somewhat chilled, bottle of red.

the service attendent at curtain springs

Tomorrow sees us doing a very short hop (about 150km) to uluru and the to kata tjuta for a good look round.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-25.3146,131.7564&ll=-25.3146,131.7564&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1