Outback Wanderers: Day 21: A Night at Lake Eyre

December 5, 2010

We camp on a dune overlooking the lake. There’s a well-groomed camp area at Halligan Bay, but there’s only a small circle for campers and no private bays. While we rest and read under the awning of a picnic area, a 4WD pulls up with a young couple from Sydney. They park the car in the camping area and while the man goes off across the salt pan looking for the water’s edge, the woman sits in a camp chair reading, hidden behind a floppy hat and candy-coloured oversized sunglasses. Later, just past dusk, bobbing headlights appear in the distant dune and we watch while another 4WD towing a camper trailer makes its way across the 10km lakeside track to the camping area. It’s not so remote out here after all.

Dusk falls while we eat dinner. Our toes enjoy the caresses of the soft sand. In the dimming light I spy a couple of small rodents scurrying from the bush a few meters from our chairs. These are dunnards, tiny marsupial mice with round bodies and curvy ears – incredibly cute. With each scamper from the protective bush they get a few inches closer to our feet, investigating the strange new smells. An array of insects is also emerging – moths, grasshoppers, wispy flying things. By the time we retire to the tent we have to shake off a pot pourri of bugs also intent on exploring the new visitors. While we lie in bed, our 12-volt reading light just above our heads, the pounding of hundreds of insects against the canvas makes it sound like rain has come.

Once the lights are out, the bugs mostly disappear. But then starts the scurrying, scampering, and what I fear might be chewing sounds of our little marsupial friends. I can’t work out whether they’re inside or outside the tent and several times I sit up to point a torch in the direction of the noise. Sleep is elusive and the restless mind is prone to hyperbole in the dark of the night. I imagine hundreds of mice emerging from the bush, their rubbery feet easily scaling the sides of the tent, their busy jaws chewing a hundred holes through the canvas, sticky, prickly paws prancing over our hot uncovered bodies, on through the mattress and into the plank of wood underneath us until finally, finally they reach their goal: our cache of food – dried grains, fruit and breads safety tucked away in a covered white container deep inside the trailer. A desert dunnard’s culinary delight.

Midnight: the usual desert breeze has gone dead in the night. It’s hot and feels claustrophobic in the tent. I go outside, put some water and two tea towels in a bucket and climb back into bed. I wring out one of the towels and hand it to Johan, whom I know is as restless and hot as I am. The other I wring out and lay on my sweaty body. It acts as a natural air conditioner and within 20 minutes I’m finally nodding off.

When the light comes I’m groggy and disoriented. Something’s playing with my fingers and I open my eyes to see Johan, already bright eyed and bustling about, smiling at me. “Don’t you think it’s time to get up?” It’s eight o’clock and he’s worried about the dark clouds on the horizon and the stretch of potentially hazardous road that gets us out of the Lake Eyre National Park. I’m relieved to see the tent still intact as I grumble out of bed.

The rain stays at bay and the trip back to Williams Creek is uneventful. The Oodnadatta Track south is a wide, straight, gravelly grey road that leads to the Flinders Ranges, then on to Port Augusta and eventually Adelaide on the south coast. It’s a reasonable road, except for frequent undulations through creek beds that have to be navigated in second gear. It takes us most of the day to get a mere 120kms down the road. The landscape is flat and monotonous, broken only occasionally by an unimpressive flat-topped hill.

The Oodnadatta track follows the Old Ghan rail route and telegraph line built in the late 19^th century and used to transport goods from Adelaide to Darwin up until 1980. We stop at various points along the way – ruins of old stone rail stations, huge cast iron tanks used to deliver water to the steam engines, and rusty iron bridges over the tops of the many dry creek beds. The best of the lot is Coward Springs camping ground, once a bustling stopover with a hotel and artesian springs, now a tourist destination. In summer, it’s pretty quiet and the advertised camel rides have gone. But there’s one thing still bubbling away: the artesian springs. Johan finds it first and takes the plunge. Oh, the unspeakable refreshment of a clear pool of cool water after days of dust, sweat and thirst! We linger…

Further down the road is a viewing area for Lake Eyre South – not as impressive as our time spent at the north (and larger) lake. But there are some great interpretive boards here and we take in the fascinating geology of this unworldly landscape. Far under the lake's catchment area, and spreading for an area almost twice as big, is the Great Artesian Basin, one of the world’s largest underground aquifers. The water gurgling up through the springs we just enjoyed a bath in has been in the ground for 2 million years. Apparently there’s enough water in the basin to fill 127,000 Darling Harbours (in Sydney). That’s big.

Such a strange contrast: this vast, parched, empty landscape with so much water lying deep underneath it.