8th May - Maree to Woomera

We enjoyed our first in-room breakfast courtesy of the cereal, orange juice, biscuits and tea in the room.  That meant we took off at 8 am for a change.  There was not a cloud in the sky but the forecast was for rain.  We had decided to miss William Creek and use the Borefields Rd to Roxby Downs.  The roads from there to Coober Pedy were all sealed.  We would have 220 kms of dirt road to negotiate but our experience so far on the Oodnadatta Track was good.  We were cruising along at 80 kph when I spotted this water tank.  It was a remnant of the old 19th century Ghan railway.  Being made of cast iron it will last for ever in the desert climate and it is the highest object for 100's kms.

This photo is for Rafe Miller.  He took Alan and I across the Utah desert with long straight roads leading to distant hills.  So I thought this looks like the Australian version.

We came across a sculpture park at a place called Alberrie that had used many familiar objects in a new way.  This piece is two light aircraft standing on their tails and connected by the wings.  The title was Plane Henge for obvious reasons.  A short distance away another of the cast iron Ghan water tanks had a head and neck attached to make it look like a huge dog.

We continued on past the turn off for Roxby Downs because I wanted to see South Lake Eyre, which had water in it.  You can see it as the grey area in the distance with the white salt around the edge.

The Borefields road was at first similar to the Oodnadatta Track and we cruised along at 80 as usual,  I was leading and suddenly found that the bike felt like it was on black ice with no grip.  I realised that I was on bulldust.  I was sure I was going to fall off and  just tried to keep the bike tracking straight and upright then I was off it.  I stopped and turned around to try and warn Alan but he was doing the same as me.  We both got quite a scare and were carefully surveying the road ahead for more bulldust from then on.  The other challenge was that as this track had far less traffic than the Oodnadatta Track the wheel ruts were much less defined.  So we had to take our own track through the loose gravel for much of the time.  That caused a few frights and I slowed down to 60 -70 kph just to be safe.  We came to the BHP Billiton Olympic Dam lease area and stopped outside the gatehouse.  There was mobile reception so we inquired about mine tours but they only have them on Fridays.  So we decided to head on to Woomera and check out the rocket range.  One benefit of the slower speeds on the Borefield road was that our fuel consumption plummeted and I got over 26 Km/L.

We stopped in Roxby Downs for lunch and to check on accommodation in Woomera.  We fell into conversation with a man in the restaurant who had worked at Olympic Dam since it opened.  He told us how they blast the ore in huge stopes and gradually drop it into the underground mine.  They then fill in the void created with concrete.  He was also a keen dirt bike racer and had participated in the Finke Desert Race several times.  The bikes  get up to speeds of 185 kph!

Olympic Dam mine uses a huge amount of electricity and these twin High Voltage power lines marched across the flat landscape in long straight lines.  The Woomera caravan park was a staff accommodation facility when Woomera was very busy in the 1950's and 1960's testing rockets for Britain.  It was a bit of a cell block, but we had a new cabin.  There were quite a few Ulyssians in residence as the hordes gather for the AGM.  We walked into town to check out the outdoor display of old rockets that had been fired at Woomera over the years.  There was a local historical society display about the town's hey days.  Alan particularly liked the section on ham radio with all the old call signs on the wall.  Then we looked through the Visitor Centre display which was more professional but not as much fun.  Woomera had a huge firing range right across Australia to the coast of Western Australia, all based on the quaint notion that the land was deserted just because there were no white men living there.  They completely forgot about the 1000's of aboriginals that lived on the range.  The site was for 20 years a joint facility with the USA and used to track missiles, famously Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles during the first Gulf War.

This is the Blue Streak that Britain developed as an intercontinental missile.  It was reasonably successful and managed to launch a satellite in the 1960's.  The UK then abandoned its missile program because of costs and the Blue Streak was used as the final stage in a joint European ELDO missile program.  That program was a failure.  Lots of other tests were conducted at Woomera including live firing at unmanned drones.  There are some current projects but the place is a shadow of its former self.