Summertime Blues

Lake Eyre

 

Lake Eyre

I appreciate that we are travelling through the hottest, driest part of Australia in the hottest,driest time of the year. I appreciate that the people who live and work in the hottest, driest part of Australia need their rest; Talc Alf being the exception - google him and his flag. They need to recover from the hordes of people who are sensible enough to travel through here during the tourist season. We are not part of that horde, but sometimes we wonder if we should be.

The weather has not been hot for summer. We have camped in some great spots with only flies, mosquitoes, cows and cockatoos for company. There was a bus of backpackers that joined the kids briefly in the natural spa at Coward Springs; but they left and headed on down the road to the pub at Williams C reek. It's a place that calls itself “the pub in the middle of nowhere”. This doesn't explain why half the population of Germany, and probably Bill Fry, has found their way there to staple a bad passport photo of themselves to the wall. It's a place you want to have a session at with a big bunch of friends. We got a not bad coffee there this morning from a surly Irish woman after the kids had done their homework in the beer-garden.

On to the Pink Palace, no, wait, that was a lifetime ago. On to the Pink Roadhouse. Plenty of local press and promotion for this place. Relying on the wit and charm of stranded Scandanavians to microwave pies for us in the summer months. Empty caravan park with a broken electric stove, but no summer discount. Almost too stony for tent pegs. A pub with a front bar less inviting than The Palace in Camberwell. Saved to some extent by a dusty, dark but interesting museum and a great pool. Oodnadatta...doesn't matter.

Or does it. I am being unreasonably harsh. We haven't met any bad people, and the ones we have have always been happy to chat and help. I mean, this is Australia most of the time. We can't expect a Hollywood like cast of thousands to make the trip special. We can't expect an “experience” everywhere we go. Yet as I look at the walls around me, I can't help but feel jealous of the 25 people who were stuck in this park for four days by floods in August, 2010. They had an “experience”, we have the real thing. Dry, dusty, dirt poor, and depressingly lonely.

It is beautiful though. It is special. Lake Eyre was so vast, so empty, and so white. The desert itself is unceasing in its variety. Sara said she didn't get bored travelling over it because it is so different to anything she's experienced. Ollie likes the graffiti on the “DIP”signs e.g. spinach / stick / sheep / iddy do dah etc. Ned counts kilometres, and Ivy watches for the old Ghan train tracks. I don't get bored because I'm always rehearsing the process I'll run through if we get a puncture. The kids are working it out. I'm confident that this trip will help them develop a feel for this country beyond “experiences”, and that has to be a good thing, unless you're a German.

H