The Centre of the Centre of Australia

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Today we start the long journey home, all two and a half thousand odd kilometres of it. And the downside of living in such a vast empty land is that there aren’t a lot of route options other than the one we used to get here. So we’re going to need to come up with things to write about that don’t just repeat what we wrote on the way up … or resort to random observations. Let’s go with the random observations … so some readers might want to stop here.

We've noticed that when we’re out here in the back of beyond on near deserted roads it seems to be customary to acknowledge drivers coming the other way. You’re apparently supposed to do this by very casually lifting your index finger slowly off the steering wheel and then lowering it again. It also appears acceptable to raise both your index and middle fingers … but not three fingers; that would be right over the top … quite apart from the fact that if you do raise three fingers, it’s virtually impossible to avoid also raising your fourth finger, well for me at least, but I guess it’s possible other people’s hands might be different. I only noticed this custom today after we’ve been driving around in the outback for a week and a half, and now that I have noticed, I can’t unnotice, and if we pass someone who doesn’t respond … well they must be a snob … the very worst type of human being … which was also presumably me until about half an hour ago. That was a rude awakening.

We check into our digs for the night, the luxurious Erldunda Desert Oaks Resort … well three star luxury at least. The bed’s on castors that don’t lock, and it’s not attached to the bed head. And how do we know this? Well Issy lies on the bed, leans against the bedhead, and the bed immediately starts rolling towards the far side of the room. Hmmm. That was interesting. But where there’s a will there’s a way. We put our heaviest suitcase in front of the foot of the bed. There that seems to work … well it does until I get on the bed too, then the whole rolling/sliding thing starts up all over again. Solution, well that would be to put our other suitcase between the first suitcase and the far wall, so everything’s now all jammed up tight. One of us is now going to trip over and break a leg when they get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but at least the bed’s not going anywhere.

It’s only lunchtime and there’s not overly much to do here. But all is not lost, there’s always the resort compendium to read, that should keep me riveted for a few minutes. But seems I may have underestimated the humble compendium, some of it’s actually moderately interesting.

It seems I was right that there’s not overly much to do here. The compendium includes a map of “what’s nearby”, which includes five places. The nearest of these is Alice Springs which is only a lazy 200 kms away. I’m not quite sure what defines “nearby” in these parts, but it seems Darwin fits the bill, after all it’s only 1,500 kms away.

It seems that we’re currently in “The Centre of the Centre of Australia” here in humble Erldunda. Huh? The compendium explains that there are ”a few complex but equally valid methods used to determine where the centre of a continent curved by the earth may be. These methods identified five points which could be considered the Centre of Australia, so the Australian Government determined that the central point of these five places would be recognised as the Centre of the Centre, and that is us!”. I wonder if that needed a full sitting of Parliament. … and to think I sometimes wonder if I‘ve got too much time on my hands.

There’s even a “wildlife reserve” here at the “resort”. … well that’s what they call it. It’s a large enclosure with three animals in it, and they seem to have diversity of sizes fairly well covered. There’s Carlotta the Camel, Erl the Emu, and Cluck Norris the chicken. Cluck’s apparently a minor celebrity who once appeared on national television … on what was presumably a slowish news day …

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Photos

Centre of the Centre of Australia marked
Hopefully the logic still holds when viewing the map backwards ….