Saturday, August 13, 2005
Day 27,28 - 12,13/08/05, Marla, Port Augusta, SA.
In the morning, we backtracked the 150 km we'd already travelled out of Alice and returned to Alice Springs, from where we made a few phone calls and had lunch before hitting the road again, hoping to get to Coober Pedy. Just as we turned onto the Stuart Highway, we saw a man with a big red suitcase trying to hitch a ride. There was no readily available place in the car, but we stopped and asked him where he was headed. “To Sydney” he said. We said we were going to Port Augusta. “That's fine. There are many trucks that come thorugh there and maybe I can get a ride on a truck from there” he said. So we cleared the back seat and managed to get his suitcase in the back, and when he was settled in set off. He said he'd come to visit some friends in Brisbane and Darwin, travelling with friends. One dropped him off at Alice, from where he'd tried the previous day to get a ride towards Sydney. Hardly anybody stopped. One that did was going to Ayer's Rock. He'd spent the night at a Salvation Army house and been standing at the roadside again from 9.00 am. It was past 1.00 pm when we picked him up. He must have been around 50 and spoke with a drawl, and seemed a bit slow to respond. He reminded us of our friend Jennifer in Melbourne, who has a hearing problem and speaks and responds very slowly, but her mind is as sharp as can be. Jim, as his name turned out to be, used to work in the Sydney railways, but now lived on a disability pension. He'd travelled around a fair bit, living in various cities, when he felt he needed a change. He also seemed to have done a considerable bit of hitchhiking to get to these cities, when he moved around. We didn't speak a lot. He sat there quietly, coughing gently occassionally, or offering a comment, now and then, like “ There's not a lot to see out here, is there” or “It looks very different here”.
We stopped for a stretch at Erldunda, where the Lassiter highway turns off to Uluru. We sked Jim if he'd had lunch. “A piece of cake and some water” he said, and hungrily ate the sandwiches and banana we offered him. We drove continuously, because Port Augusta was a long way off from Alice Springs, and there wasn't much in between to stop and see. It was 7.00 pm when we turned into the roadhouse at Marla, the first town in South Australia. We decided to stop there for the night.
We'd discovered, that night at Marla that our headlights weren't working. They'd worked fine until then, but after we switched them off at Marla they wouldn't come on. This was a bit of a worry, and we didn't want to take any chances driving in the evening, and wanted to get to Port Augusta during daylight. So we started at 7.20 the next morning and kept going. We stopped a few times to stretch, change drivers or have a quick bite, for breakfast and lunch. We also stopped to take some pictures of wedge-tailed eagles, feeding on the carcasses of roadkill. These birds are the largest birds of prey in the country. We hadn't seen any until now. But saw plenty on the drive to Port Augusta. many of them were in pairs, while in some places there were many birds. They were often accompanied by crows, waiting for the leftover morsels. On one occasion we saw that an eagle had been the victim of a roadhit, probably while he was feeding on another roadkill.
Twice in the morning we stopped for some aboriginal people. We'd heard about incidents of a single person flagging down a vehicle, and when the vehicle stopped many people swarming out of the bushes and getting into the vehicle to hitch a ride. the first person we stopped for was alone, beside his car with its bonnet open. We stopped some distance away and he came up to us and peered inside the car. We asked him what the matter was, and he mumbled that the engine was stuck. As he was talking a woman came out of the bushes and towards us. We were going in the opposite direction to where they're car was pointing, and observed that to them. Then the man asked uncertainly for some water. We gave him a big bottle we had. He asked if we had any cigarettes, we didn't. It dodn't look like there was anything else we could do for them, and so we started to turn the car round to continue on our way, when a third person started yelling out and calling to us from the bushes. We just carried on.
The second person we stopped for was also heading in the opposite direction. We stopped to ask what was wrong. He said he was coming from Port Augusta and ran out of fuel. We said we couldn't help because ours ran on diesel. he said “That's alright, then. I'll just wait for my mate to come back with the fuel”. Then he asked us if we had some cigarettes, and we told him we didn't. He waved us on. It seemed quite weird that someone would drive from Port Augusta, and run out of fuel in the middle of nowhere, in a land where there's nothing at all and the towns are really far between. But that's the way things are around here, I guess.
The drive passed through landscape which varied a little, subtly. There were sometimes sand dunes, later stony arid land with short bushes. We did see cattle, and camels and horses too. Then we passed a large area where there wasn't a tree in site for as far as the eye could see. And the land was so flat, and featureless and you could see all the way to horizon on all sides and it all looked exactly the same. This must be where the flat earth society, if there is one, would be based.
We also passed beside some large lakes. Of course there was no water at all there, only a dazzling white crust of salt. And some hills which were completely bare, beside the lake, which gave us the feeling that we were on some other planet! At some points, where the road went over a low hill we could see the road ahead stretching into the distance in front, like a purple ribbon, through the barren land. (Though the land looks barren, we know that there is a lot of life, Many species of insects, birds, reptiles and plants inhabit these areas. Each one of them has specific tactics and skills to survive in this harsh landscape.) Much as we wanted to we couldn't stop to take pictures at any of these places. We pushed on and made it into Port Augusta just as the sun was setting.
Jim wanted to head off immediately and so we dropped him at a roadhouse where trucks stopped, and he could hitch a ride. We then went off and pitched tent in a caravan park on the shores of the Gulf of Spencer.
