Oz Trip - Day 20 - William Creek

Day 20 – 21/5/2012 – William Creek

It was a nice short day today from Coward Springs to William Creek. All up it was only about 70km.

We stopped for smoko at the Beresford ruins, another old siding stop along the Old Ghan railway. This one was a little more challenging to get into, especially with the camper on.

Road into ruins

Beresford ruins - another siding on the Old Ghan railway

We checked into the Pub camp grounds just before lunch. We ate lunch in the camper away from the flies. They are every where. They take about 5 minutes to find you once you get out of the vehicle and then you are madly swatting them away from your face after that. The fly nets that Jodie bought have probably been the best $4 investment of the trip so far! It stops you going crazy.

William Creek Pub

Inside Pub

Dinning Room

Speaking of investments of the trip so far, I was questioning myself on why I spent some much on preparing the Pajero and camper for the trip today just after we passed a Honda Jazz with 3 worried looking pensioners heading south along the Oodnadatta Track! Maybe the Jazz has a dodgy GPS navigator. There were also a few Rav 4's, Subaru Outback and an old guy on a push bike riding up a crest on the wrong side of the road!!! I am sure it won't all be in vain as this is really a bit of a shake down trip for when we hit the Gibb River Road.

All of the expense hadn't been in vain. One of the best things we could have done was add the Stone Stomper between the vehicle and the camper. At William Creek we counted at least 5 4WD's with smashed rear windows due to rocks bouncing off the front of what ever they were towing and back up into their rear windows. A Stone Stomper is cheap compared to the cost of a new rear window and not to mention all of the dust that you would get inside even when it is taped and boarded up.

On checking into the pub, we checked the road conditions out to Halligans Bay on Lake Eyre. According to all the reports it was pretty rough. The last 15km taking about 1½ hours to do. We decided to give this one a skip. Instead we had a bit of a relax afternoon. Jodie read and I had a bit of a walk around with the camera. There were a few old rockets that had been collected from around the region that had crashed back to earth after being launched from Woomera.

I also finally caught up on all of the blog posts for the last week or so. I think I will have to shorten them so they don't take up so much time to put together.

That night we had dinner at the William Creek Hotel. It certainly didn't have the same feel as the Maree Pub. There were no locals. The whole town of William Creek feels like it is just a tourist town. We felt that if the tourists didn't come here as a jumping off point to Lake Eyre, then it probably wouldn't exist. Maree at least had a town that wasn't built around tourists and charging tourist prices. It was also the most expensive for diesel so far. $2.30 per litre!!