Broken Hill to Uluru 

Posted by efloow on June 25, 2015 in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Day 3 was Broken Hill to Coober Pedy, a massive 950km in 10 hours. Remarkably it really did not seem all that bad. The landscape kept changing, from desert of Broken Hill back to costal again at Port Augusta (the western end of the Bight which is pretty much where we are planning on finishing up in seven months time) and then back to desert again. Interestingly we saw very little wildlife, especially considering how much we had seen in the previous day. Apparently all the recent rains means they don’t need to hang around the roads?

The Stuart Highway, from Port Augusta to Darwin is an amazing easy driving stretch of mostly straight road. The most exhilarating and terrifying part was overtaking the massive road trains; massive trucks have anywhere from 2 to 4 trailers and hurtling along at 100kph.

In Coober Pedy, the opal mining capital of the world, we stayed in an old mine converted into a motel. 25 m underground was remarkably warm despite no heating and 1 degree outside… Fun! Coober Pedy is dusty, nothing green and so many piles of dirt from the mines all around for kilometres. Don’t go walking after dark or you might fall into a hole!

On the next day, the drive from Coober Pedy to Yulara (Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP) was hard work. I suspect that we were all a little over the car!  We have done a little over 2,500km in 3 days and Hol’s and Alex have been stars. Audiobooks (Percy Jackson), reading, a little iPading, and a lot of Mummy maths and spelling tests have whiled away the hours.

We arrived in Yulara in a convoy of trailers. It is a bit like parking at the Northbridge Woolies, except everybody is towing something obscene making the manoeuvrings a little bit more colourful. However, despite the crowds it is actually an OK place. The trailer set up without too much fuss… just trying to workout where everything goes… storage is a premium!  

 

Then onto sunset at Uluru. It is so beautiful, massive, impressive! Now, onto the first night in our new home…

 

Facts:
June 24: Broken Hill – Cockburn – Peterborough – Port Augusta (Stuart Highway) – Coober Pedy / 946km, 0730 – 1700 / 154L, $204 at Port Augusta

June 25: Coober Pedy – Marla – Kulgera – Erldundra (Lasseter Hwy) – Yulara (Uluru-Kata Tjuta NP) / 750km, 0830 – 1530 / Fuel Coober Pedy 100L, $163 + Kulgera 74L, $137 (187c per L, wow!)