Oz Trip - Day 21 - William Ck to Cooper Pedy

Day 21 – 22/5/2012 – William Creek to Cooper Pedy

On the way to Oodnadatta we came across an eagle perched in about the only tree for miles around. Luckily he stayed around long enough for me to pull the rig up and jump out and take a few photos. Normally they are pretty shy and don't let you get too close. He hung around just long enough for me to get a few good photos.

Big Eagle

The first stop was, surprise surprise, some more old ruins. It was Warrana siding. There wasn't much of it left. Warrana was the stating point that mapped a fair chunk of inland Australia.

Not much left here!

When talking to a guy at William Creek, he mentioned that they the Old Peake Telegraph Station was pretty good with most of the ruins still pretty much intact. We found the turn off for it and started heading down the road. The road was pretty rough. It took us about 15min to 2km with the camper on. We figured at that rate it was going to take us a couple of hours to get in and back out as it was 19km off the road. We figured that we should put this one on the “too do list” for if we are ever back in the area and at least camp out there over night.

The lunch stop would have made another excellent overnight camping spot. It was Algebuckina bridge. It was the largest single bridge in South Australia. I am not sure if it still is or not but that is what it says on the info sign. There was lots of space and there was a bit of water under the bridge as well.

Nice Camp Site

One odd thing that caught my eye was a stencilled logo on an old striped car body. It was a fish with the words “THE CARP” in the centre of the fish.

At about 2:30pm we finally arrived at Oodnadatta.

Road into Oodnadatta

It was not what we expected. We didn't get a really good feeling when we pulled into the town. We drove around the roadhouse and we couldn't see any other people in the camp grounds behind the roadhouse. The whole town looked a bit like a large junk yard. There was just stuff everywhere. So we decided to do another 200km and press on to Cooper Pedy hoping that we would make it before dark.  After talking to some other people later on, they said that they had stayed there with no problems.

The Pink Road House

The road from Oodnadatta to Cooper Pedy was the roughest we had encountered so far. It had everything. Corrugated sections, sandy sections, but mostly rocky sections. It was also the section of road where we had seen the most tyre carcases as well. Probably not unexpected considering how rocky it was.

This road took us through the Painted Desert.

And also the Moon Plains. There was not a stitch of vegetation for as far as the eye could see. It was only rocks and most of them looked like they had sharp edges so I was doing my best to miss the larger of them so as not to slice up the tyres to much.

As the vegetation started to reappear, we came across a corridor of small trees. Someone had named it “Lollipop Lane”. They looked like a whole heap of little lollipops on the horizon.

Lolliepop Lane

We finally arrived at Cooper Pedy at about 5:30pm. The Big 4 van park was absolutely chocker block. We managed to get about the second last site for the night. We didn't know what to think when we read the back of the camp ground map that they lock the gates and lock you in at 10pm and don't reopen them again until 6am!