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Published: June 30th 2018
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Day 2 of our Kakadu Trip. We travelled from Port Augusta to a place called Erldunda which is on the corner of the Stuart and Lasseter Highways. This is the corner where everyone turns off the Stuart Highway to go to Uluru. We won’t be going to Uluru as we went last year. Well this leg of our journey was going to be a boring trip. Another 1000kms of basically straight road on reasonably flat semi arid country. We started off at 5am. Obviously in the dark. If you have travelled the Australian outback before you know NOT to travel in the dark as the kangaroos love to jump in front of you while you are driving. Luckily only one kangaroo jumped in front of Paul. He didn‘t hit it but I am sure he tried. Hitting a kangaroo at 100km can do a lot of damage to a car. The road was pretty clear of traffic and once the sun came up the drive became pleasant. As I suspected roadkill became more prevalent and we saw quite a few birds feeding off the kills including some pretty large eagles. At mid morning we went to a small roadhouse that had
a special of “Roadkill rissoles”. I am sure it was just a joke but my grandchildren thought it was true (cause I told them it was). Lunch was in Coober Pedy. Opal capital of Australia. Again we visited this place last year. Landscape quite ugly with all of the mining mounds dotting the landscape. The land we were driving through were large rural properties with cattle and sheep. Problem is there are no fences so it is not unusual to see cattle, sheep, kangaroos or emu crossing the road. Luckily today there was only one kangaroo crossing in front of us. We saw plenty of sheep, a couple of emu’s and a small number of kangaroos. My son Paul did see one dead cow on the side of the road all bloated and ready to pop. These rural properties are all separated by grids. Now if you haven’t been on these roads the grids come up every so often and cross the road. The grids are made up of 7 or 8 metal girders spaced apart in parallel that cross the roads and they are spaced apart enough so that the cows and sheep won’t cross them. In effect these
which station are we entering
Each time there is a new farm station we see this sign telling us to watch out for cattle and to remember there are no fences. are used to stop the animals from crossing one farm to another. We also started seeing the road trains. These are enormous trucks about 30 to 50 metres long and normally three trailers in length. They are extremely hard to pass. I passed one and found myself running out of road before a second train was coming the other way. Let me just say I don’t want that to happen to me ever again. We have now arrived at Erldunda. This small road house has a very old and tired motel and caravan park as well as a very busy service station. Diesel was very expensive at $2 per litre. The motel rooms are tired but clean enoug. .
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Joe
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Kangaroos & Trucks
Stay safe be careful of Kangaroos & Trucks. Enjoy your time ?