Getting Sirty in SA

DAY 5: YULARA (near Ayers Rock/Uluru) - COOBER PEDY
(700 km / 435 mi)
Finally got going at 7.30 am for the big run down to Coober Pedy. Getting 11 people and four vehicles moving is no mean feat and now I know why drovers have dogs. From Ayers Rock we had to backtrack to Erldunda to get back onto the main highway south. One of our companion vehicles is a huge campervan in the Winnebago style. During that leg it had what is called an unsavoury incident with the on-board chemical toilet…suffice to say it’s the sort that wrinkles the nose, waters the eyes and creates an automatic gag reflex. Is that close to too much information? When this was reported to the rest of the team it prompted a whole raft of shall we say “crappy” jokes, which filled the CB radio airwaves between the other team vehicles. I thought I had the prize won when I suggested that we rename the campervan “The Grand Poobah”, but I was well and truly trumped when Megan, our youngest team member, christened it “Winnie the Pooh”. This was now getting kinda dangerous, because I was laughing so hard by this time, I nearly ran off the road.

The team had a “wee” break at Erldunda and then headed down to Kulgera for the official refuel stop and lunch. We started to catch up to some of the slower solar cars. They had a day off in Alice Springs when the Greenfleeters went to Ayers Rock yesterday. We passed the dog fence just out of Coober Pedy. This is the longest fence in the world at well over 4,000 miles and was erected many years ago, to keep dingos out of sheep farming country.

Coober Pedy is the home of the famous black opal and opal mining has been called the most heartbreaking job in the world, mainly because opals form in clumps, rather than seams and there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to where they can be found. You can see ample evidence of this, as the surrounding landscape is littered with a haphazard conglomerate of huge conical piles of dug and discarded dirt, as far as the eye can see. They leave the resultant deep holes uncovered as well. A rough life attracts a tough breed…this is a place where men are men and women wish they were somewhere else. There’s an old Coober Pedy saying “don’t walk alone at night and don’t walk backwards”. Sound advice on both counts.

Took the Saab out several miles to the Breakaways and got it absolutely filthy, but it was worth every speck of dust. This naturally sculptured work of art by mother nature is the result of the sedimentary crust eroding over many millennia, leaving huge outcrops of harder silcrete looming out of the dusty floor like long forgotten sentinels with multi-layered uniforms. Great backdrop for some publicity photos with the Saab.

Still waiting for the Dyno and emission test results but in the meantime we had a quick look at the fuel economy figures. We’ll need to check this properly, but it would seem that the best we did on E85 was about 10.4 litres per 100k and so far on ULP 8.6 litres per 100 km.

Tomorrow we’re off to Port Augusta, which is the penultimate leg before Adelaide.