The Best Laid Plans....

How true is the saying, 'The best laid plans of mice and men, oft times goes astray.' I set out determined to maintain a detailed, and hopefully interesting account of our travels but soon realised that it was going to be a hopeless task. I had a choice, live the trip or spend my time immersed in technology. I decided to live, assisted by technology. How I bless my iphone tape recorder. It has become my research tool. I've walked in and touched Uluru and along the Kings Canyon creek walk where there is no wifi talking into my tape recorder. This way I could record my thoughts, memories and feelings while I watched young fit people heading for the ridge walk up heart attack hill. However, it was great fun to see the amazement on many faces when they saw me walking along chatting into my iphone. I could practically see the thoughts, 'How on earth is she managing to connect'. I'm now at Alice Springs and can't wait to experience The Ghan' overnight trip to Adelaide.
Maybe I'll catch up with this blog when I get home. Maybe I'll just use this and my iphone tape recorder to write the story.

Port Augusta Good or bad?

1973: we pull into Port Augusta excited by the prospect of finally being able to go 'Out Back'. Lots of accumulated washing to do, provisions to buy, cooking to do with the last chance of being hooked up to electricity (stew, hard boiled eggs, chicken pieces etc. and jelly for the kids. In two days we head on to The Wilderness. There we have to be self sufficient.
Port Augusta is a run down rather dirty hub of activity. The Caravan Park is very basic but this is a 'working stop over '. Somewhere to stock up and hurry through.

These are the memories that I have carried with me for forty years. Whenever anyone said they were going there I'd say, 'Hurry on through, it's the pits of a town.'

We arrive to a neat, cared for looking town with good roads and all facilities. We go straight into the town centre and buy bread etc. at Coles. I want to go to the library but Alan is tired and doesn't want to try and find it. While Alan is filling the car up with petrol I get out my ipad, connect to the internet via the pocket wifi (which I'm using now) that Paul set up for us, go online and find where the Port Augusta library is and the hours. I then type the address into Alan's Tomtom GPS and 'wallah'... it is just around the corner from where we are parked.
The librarian is friendly and supportive and I leave having donated a copy of Pickle to Pie to the library and they insisted on buying ten copies for their book clubs. When we get to The Acacia Ridge Motel I crank up the laptop, connect to the internet and email them an invoice. Totally amazing technology not even thought about in 1973.
The motel is generous and comfortable and we have an excellent cooked breakfast. We arrived at 7.30 am  and the guy got up from reading his paper and poached fresh eggs for us to go with all the other goodies offered. What a great start to the day. The motel had gone up $20 since I'd booked.
Driving out of town we took a quick look around and I was amazed at the parks and gardens plus how they have upgraded the town and yet managed to keep the best of it's architecture and distinctive character. The façade of an old building has been left and we drove through an old brick archway into a modern car-park and Coles supermarket. It's a place I would like to revisit and spend time.

Bottled water and Gloria

We have bought twenty-four bottles of spring water with us. Do we need it or is this a memory of flat tasteless water where only special soap would lather and your hair stood up on end? I used to joke that it was easy to style. Because it was so dry, all I had to do was snap my hair off into a shape and it would stay that way. Will it be the same on this trip or will we bring the bottled water home with us.

A Sunliner mobile home complete with TV, air-conditioning unit and towing a Rav 4 4x4 car behind races past. How classy is that. What a contrast between what could be a couple of grey nomads spending their kid's inheritance to Mum, Dad and two small boys in an old yellow F100 piggy backing a renovated pick up camper.
Alongside the road are huge canvas covered hills of wheat. I wonder if I lift an edge of the canvas  whether I'll see thousands of mice scamper and scurry.

Before we reach Port Augusta we decide to take the old road to Port Germaine . After taking pictures of the longest jetty we elect to go into the old local pub for coffee. Inside is warm and friendly. I drag up a bar stool in front of a big open fire and Alan stands at the bar ordering our drinks. A wizened up old lady toddles into the bar and heads for the stool next to me. She heaves herself onto the stool and settles her arms on the counter. All the staff greet her as if she is part of their family. I have never seen anyone so lined. Her eyes are nearly hidden under folds of eyelid skin and her cheeks are deeply furrowed. Her ragged old cardigan is missing several buttons, and on her head is a multi coloured beanie that has seen better days. Wisps of grey hair escape and form a halo.
   'Do you live here? I ask
  'This is my stool and I just go home to lay down my head' she replied. 'Come on Barry, where's my coffee? she chides the tardy barkeeper. 'He can't make good coffee,' she confides. 'Mike is the only one who knows how to make my coffee, but he's not on today.'
We talk for about half an hour and I come away feeling enriched for having met her. I wonder how old she really is? And that's not a question I'm going to ask any woman.

Cacti Wonderland

Sun shining on rain washed trees, open country and frolicking lambs. The family are all well. All is right in my world. We pass a sign to Two Wells and I am sad that I can't go there. Jason was four when we visited the newly formed cacti garden.
    'Look Mum, they are all furry,' he said and grabbed one in his right hand. We spent the next 20miles in the truck pulling out tiny cactus spines one by one from his palm. I wonder how much those cacti have grown, or if they are still there. I am pulled out of my reverie when I see the tall arms of an old saguaro cactus pointing to the sky.
     'Pull over, Alan', I cry. He drives down a dirt road lined by tall red hot poker plants until we see wheel marks turning left and the wire fence pulled back. He parks and waits while I carefully wander into a different world. It is as if I have stepped into Santa Fe in New Mexico where the cacti have gone wild. Cacti of every species and variety, taller than the derelict building hidden amongst them, fight for supremacy amongst gums and wattle trees. On the ground are large and small stone circles. One circle has a huge palm tree in the centre. Who lived here?  Did they come here from New Mexico and plant all these cacti because they yearned to rest their eyes on something familiar? Maybe, forty years ago a besotted young husband planted them for his American bride? Had he since died and the house and land forgotten. I will never know but I came away feeling I had witnessed something unique and very special. I stepped into our car and gazed out the side window at open country and frolicking lambs, but my mind was still standing gazing at a forest of huge cacti and wondering how they got there.

To speed or not to speed

Driving from Coonalyn to Tailem we pass kilometres of burnt scrub on either side of the road. This definitely is a country of drought, fire and flooding rains. We have to constantly watch our speed. The GPS tells us when we go over the limit, but there is always the fear of being fined. It's so easy to plant the foot when you have a wide open expanse of bitumen, no other cars in sight and many kilometres to go before you get to your accommodation for that night.
Back in 1974 we never had to worry about speed. Our F100 ute and old renovated pickup camper with bulky Luton overhang couldn't speed if our lives depended on it. We bought the pick up camper through The Trading Post, knowing it would need a lot of work before we could take it away. My Dad and several farmhands manhandled it onto  a flat tray trailer from its resting place beside a dam at Kurrumburra.   He and Alan worked on it every night for months, attaching hydraulic legs, and fitting a larger water tank. They made extra cupboards and added a tiny fridge. When opening the door I had to be ready to catch the two eggs which consistently fell out of the egg rack. Dad and Alan also installed a pump for the sink while I sewed curtains and bed covers.

Our motel tonight at Tunundra has all mod cons. I told a man we were heading for Port Augusta the next day.
       'You won't want to stay there long', he said. I agree with him. If my memory is correct Port Augusta is a place to buy provisions and leave at the first available opportunity. However, I simply nod and decide to wait and see.

Coonalypyn

Looming up before us are the tall wheat silos of Coonalypyn. This visit we are not trying to find a caravan park or camping spot, then set up our camp and cook dinner for a family of four. Tonight we have a motel booked in Tanundra. All we have to do when we arrive is deposit our bags in our room and find a pub for dinner. However, old habits die hard and I still pride myself on being able to provide good food along the way. If we have some sort of misadventure and are stuck for any reason, I can always produce a meal. Packed away in the back of the Hyundai I have a box of 'standby food'. Rice, tinned beans, pasta and meat sauce. At the very least there is the makings for about four good meals. I've learnt that you never know what will happen when travelling and if well fed, life does not appear so grim and everyone copes much better. On the back seat of our Santa Fe are two carry bags. One contains a mixed variety of fruit. The other has travel snacks of nuts, dry biscuits, muesli bars, bottles of water etc. I call those bags my security blanket and just to see them jiggling along gives me a sense of security and well being. I feel safe. I can fulfil my role of provider of nourishing things.

Today, black clouds obliterate the sun with occasional torrential downpours. We hear that Coober Pedy had its yearly rainfall in one day. No wonder the bush and undergrowth looks so fresh and green. What will the Outback look like this year?

Where, Oh where?

For the life of us we can't remember where we spent our first night in 1974. I guess I'll just have to drag out the old diaries when I get home.
We do remember that trip had to work in with Alan's long service leave. Coles and Garrard gave Alan half his pay so that the next half went into the bank after June 30th. It would be better tax wise if it was in the next financial year. This meant that by the time we reached Mount Isa we had run out of money. To manage until the money was in the bank we bush camped at the extreme rear of a beautiful lake behind the Mt Isa mines. We used up anything we had in the cupboards on, in and under stale bread. The water was crystal clear, but we noticed dead fish floating in the reeds at the edge of the lake. Had the lead from the mines killed them? We couldn't get the chalky taste out of the vegetables when we cooked them in lake water and Alan had an immovable white film over his dentures.
We had filled our water tank from a tap at the park before we realized the consequences. We lived with the taste until we reached a little town and an Aussie China man wrapped in a woolly jumper on a warm sunny day gave us some small bush lemons. Alan removed the water tank from under the camper, attached it to a rope, threw it into the middle of a nearby stream and let the clear water run through. Filled with fresh water and with some bush lemon juice squeezed into it and the tank was back to fresh drinking water once again.

I walk into a warm and comfortable motel and turn on the tap to fill the jug.