A shaky start!

A shaky start

Well.......... we've made it to Coober Pedy - but not without incident or stress! Not the cold nights, nor the rough roads - they were no problem at all. Not even the burnt toast and over-zealous smoke alarm in the quiet surrounds of Mambray Creek. Not even the flat tyre on the caravan between Leigh Creek and Coward Springs (our first stretch of the Oodnadatta Track), or the fact that we made it to William Creek with less than a litre of fuel left. It was the fact that the van batteries lost their charge very quickly both nights that we were "powerless", that

the solar panels don't seem to be charging them up again, and that the charming (ha ha) people at William Creek simply couldn't commit to fixing the tyre in time for us to make it to Coober Pedy before dark. In the end we just went without getting it fixed - and had no dramas. Actually the road was really good. We have seen some fantastic desert landscapes, Lake Eyre South with water in it and the amazing "mound springs" that well up out of the earth and form natural spa baths in the middle of the most barren landscape imaginable. The girls have climbed lots of trees, watched lots of movies in the car and worked out their preferred position in their "triple bed". Tomorrow we'll explore Coober Pedy (Kendall thought we were having her on when we told her people live underground here) and get our spare tyre fixed. Surely nothing else will go wrong for a while...............??

Picture captions from the top:

- idyllic setting at Mambray Creek

- coal mining viewing area at Leigh Creek

- natural "spa" at Coward Springs campground (spa was first used by the Ghan railway workers in the 1860s!)

- water in Lake Eyre - seen from a distance. Andrew thinks it's basically just wet sand - but it looked good

- Waiting for our tyre at William Creek - looking much happier than we felt