Nullarbor Explorer travel diaries

 We met up with Ron and Jill the night before the tour: they’d flown in early for a little more taste of Adelaide. Wandering the streets of Glenelg, we discovered a Chinese restaurant that served some of the best Chinese food any of us had experienced in all of our Australia wide travels. 

Day 1

Departing Adelaide early, Kitty drove straight to Port Augusta to buy the freshest food for the ten day trip ahead; Barry took our clients along a more picturesque route, taking in the sights of the SA drive.

We all met up for lunch in Port Augusta at the Wadlata Centre and left Ron and Jill to enjoy the full experience whilst cars were fueled up, final checks made and vehicles fine tuned: the next day we were heading into remote areas.

Day 2

Departing early, we headed up the Sturt Highway to our overnight destination of Woomera. The countryside along the way was fairly flat and consisted mainly of sheep stations, interspersed with mining infrastructure.

Morning tea happened at the tiny community of Pimba. This amazing small rest stop offers shaded tables, toilets and showers and a great rest area, as well as a roadhouse and fuel stop. They don’t charge but have donation boxes put out – we were happy to contribute to the cost of maintaining this wonderful facility. Incidentally, the word ‘Pimba’ refers to the native pine, of which there was a huge lack – those early Europeans used them for building and fencing purposes, which denuded the area.

Woomera was originally an important location used for experimenting with potential rocket warfare. It was used by the Australian armed forces as well as Britain, the US, West Germany and NASA up until 1999. Since then it was used as an illegal immigration detention centre up until 2003 and it is still used as a residential base for military personal working on projects in the area.  

There’s a great outdoor museum, with many examples of the rockets and planes used in developing this type of warfare.

The information centre at Woomera is well worth a visit. Being a Saturday and a deserted townsite, we didn’t expect anything to be open and we drove by by chance. It didn’t look open but inside was a great little cafe and a wonderful display of the original equipment used in the area, as well as an entire room dedicated to Len Beadell and his efforts in developing the area.

From Woomera we decided to explore a little further inland and check out the opal mining fields of Andamooka; one of the great advantages of specialist 4wd touring is that itineraries can be flexible and we have the ability to get into really remote and unique areas.

Unlike Coober Pedy, the houses here are built into the side of the hills, rather than underground. The opal in this area is more easily accessible than at Lightning Ridge or CP but of lesser quality.  Like those two towns, water has always been at a premium and they have water bowsers where you pay to fill up, just like at a fuel pump.

Locals tend to live in plots where there is a lot of outdated machinery.

We decided to have a drink in the local hotel, only to discover that the convivial group of drinkers on the veranda were actually just a muso group and that the hotel hadn’t been operational since 2013! They were very welcoming, however, and gave us icy glasses of soft drink and a guided tour of the defunct heritage building.

The once famous Opal Bar had a fantastic copper surround and some amazing portraits of the original opal miners who used to drink there.

From the Opal Bar, we headed towards some of the restored miner’s huts; these sort of dwellings are actually still lived in (one of our hosts at the Opal Bar came to Andamooka 18 months ago, bought an old dwelling and is restoring it – he has a mine shaft right in the middle of his living room!).

To be continued…