by Westy » Wed Oct 23, 2019 1:54 am
We left William Creek and headed to Coober Pedy, a thriving opal mining centre on the Stuart Highway which runs from Adelaide on the Southern Ocean to Darwin on the Timor Sea and runs through the traditional centre of Australia, Alice Springs.
It was another 170 kms of dirt road but the ute and trailer handled it well. We came across 2 damsels in distress, approximately 60 kms from Coober Pedy. Two ladies travelling in a Nissan ute and pulling a small 5th wheeler had broken a u-bolt from the axle to the leaf spring on the 5th wheeler. They had spares but not the knowledge or strength to repair the damage. Fortunately, I was able to provide assistance and they were soon on their way, albeit very cautiously. I ran into them a day later and they were getting professional repairs done in Coober Pedy.
Coober Pedy has produced millions of dollars worth of opals and is notable for having many houses built underground in old mine diggings. The temperature down there is a constant 22-24 degrees C (72-75 deg F) and is the only way people can endure the extreme summer temperatures (without airconditioning) that often reach 50 deg C (122 deg F).
We headed North to Erldunda in the Northern Territory and then West to Uluru (formerly Ayers Rock). We overnighted at Uluru and headed out on to the Great Central Road heading back to WA. The GCR is 1200 kms (745 miles) of, mostly fine powdery dirt, known colloquially as “bulldust”. It gets into everything. After the first day, I found that a small amount of the dust had entered the trailer at the bottom of both doors. My seals weren’t as good as I had thought. It was an easy fix by just taping the bottom of the doors with duct tape.
We stopped along the way an visited Lasseter’s Cave, where an explorer named Harold Lasseter sheltered after his camels had bolted during a storm and left him stranded. Lasseter set out for a base camp 140 km away but succumbed to a lack of food and water. This was in 1931 and Lasseter was looking for a fabulously rich gold reef that he had found 2 years previously. The secret died with him and the reef has never been located despite many searches.
We saw dingoes (wild dogs), kangaroos, emus and many camels. Although the camels are not native to Australia (they were introduced to open up the Outback in the late 1800’s along with many Afghan cameleers whose many descendants still live here) they thrive in the outback and have become a feral pest. There is quite a lucrative business in rounding up the camels, transporting them by road train to Adelaide or Darwin where they are live shipped to the Middle East for the rich sheiks and sultans to use for camel racing. The Australia breed is very well regarded and much sought after. We also came across a wedge tail eagle sitting on a fence post. These eagles are our largest bird of prey with a body length of up to 3’6” and a wingspan of up to 9’4”. They are a magnificent creature. They are often seen on the side of a road feeding on kangaroo road kill but take off, majestically, as your car approaches.
We hit the sealed road again at Laverton in WA, visited a living ghost town called Kookynie, where the hotel security guard is a horse ( he wandered in from an abandoned station about 2 years ago, distressed and in need of water. The hotel owner, a lady, gave him 5 buckets full of water and he recovered quickly. Since then he refuses to leave her side and blocks the door to the hotel. I had to push him out of the way just to get a beer) and then made our way to Kalgoorlie, the fabulously rich gold mining town.
Kalgoorlie is the home to an area known as “The Golden Mile” which is, I believe, the richest square mile of gold ground in the world. It is now home to the “Superpit”. The superpit is massive, deep and overwhelming. It operates around the clock with drilling, blasting, digging (loading on to 200t dump trucks) and transporting the ore from the bottom of the pit to the surface for crushing, milling, gold extraction and refining.
85 million tonnes of gold bearing ore is removed each year that produces 700,000 ounces of gold. That is worth (current figures) AU$1,526,000,000 or US$1,044,000,000. For every 1,000,000 tonnes of ore removed, approximately 9,700 ounces of gold is recovered. So, to drill down further, using 200t dump trucks, about 1 gold ball size of gold is recovered from every 7 truck loads. It is a massive operation.
From Kalgoorlie to back home was uneventful. In total, I travelled 10,541 kms (6,550 miles) with about 1500 kms of gravel road. No punctures and no problems.
I hope you have enjoyed this and there are some photos following.