Thursday morning after breakfast I was back at Underground Books,
our departure point for
The Mail Run.
Twice a week, one of the Rowes, father or son, makes the twelve
hour journey over unpaved roads to pick up and deliver mail to the
Outback townships of Oodnadatta and William Creek and to a handful of
enormous cattle stations. This is in addition to their regular jobs
as proprietors of Underground Pottery in town.
Derek
was our guide today; I'd met him on Tuesday when my tour popped into
the pottery shop for a look 'round. Oh, and I met him at the
airport on Friday before my flight out. Small world, Coober Pedy.
Once outside of town, we head across the Dog Fence and on to the
Moon Plain. A hundred million years ago the Plain was at the bottom
of an inland sea. Derek is credited with several major fossil
finds, including part of an ichthyosaur backbone. Hard to imagine
this place under water, although I'm told the residual salt content
from those long ago days is responsible for the extremely poor
quality of the soil.
Eventually the landscape changes a little. From entirely flat and
devoid of any vegetation, we go to occasional clumps of trees or
shrubs and even more occasional water holes, a couple of which have
water on this early fall day. There's even a sign or two of animal
life, which I manage to capture before it bounces out of sight.
We reach our first cattle station, find someone to take the mail,
pick up the outgoing and we're back on the road. Forty-five minutes
later we're in Oodnadatta, dropping off mail and getting lunch at
the Pink Roadhouse.
The town's not much now, but back a hundred years or so it was a
pretty happening place. Oodnadatta was a station on the old Ghan,
the rail line that ran north from Adelaide. When the line was first
built, goods intended for Alice Springs got this far by train and
then made the rest of the journey by camel. A few decades later the
line was extended to Alice. Now there's a
new Ghan that runs from
Adelaide through Alice and all the way to Darwin on the north coast.
The new line bypasses Oodnadatta, which saw its last old Ghan train
in 1980.
We follow the route of the old Ghan for more than an hour out of
Oodnadatta. It's hard to imagine the work of creating a level
roadbed using only manual labor, especially in this unforgiving
desert. The roadbed is still visible for much of the journey,
although a lot of the track has been pulled up for use on the local
cattle stations. (I think they call that "ingenuity". Or maybe
"theft".) At left is the longest bridge on the old line, indeed the
longest in South Australia: the Algebuckina Bridge over the Neales
River.
At right is a monument to an amazingly stupid and unlucky
driver. The river was in flood, so he decided to use the railway
bridge to cross. Unfortunately, the southbound Ghan had other
ideas. The driver jumped out of the car and survived. In addition
to losing his car, he was charged for the damage he did to the
train.
Before leaving the bridge, we spotted a pair of emus crossing a
ridge nearby. Not a great picture, I grant. But I like emus;
they're like ostriches without all the attitude. And these were the
only ones I'd seen in the wild this trip, aside from a family pet at
a B&B on Kangaroo Island. So
if it's okay with you, I'll keep the picture.
We stopped at three more cattle stations that afternoon. The last,
Anna Creek Station, took forever to reach. At 12,000 square miles
it's the world's largest, and is often described as being a little
bit bigger than Belgium. The property belongs to the Kidman
organization, started by Nicole's grandfather. (Beautiful, talented
and rich? That is so unfair...)
Our guide pointed out the satellite disk on the station manager's
house; these days, Internet access is an essential component to
running a station. But the net has changed more than that out
here. On my second trip to Oz I visited the
School of the Air in Alice
Springs, where Outback kids are taught by radio. It's a valiant
attempt to solve a huge logistical problem. But as one of its
students, Derek didn't think much of the education he'd received.
Given the state of the mails, test results could take months to be
evaluated and returned. Talk about a loss of immediacy! The net
has changed all that, providing timely feedback even to isolated
students. One wonders what effect it'll have on the next generation
out in the Outback.
Our last stop of the day was at William Creek: a pub, a cafe and an
airstrip. Oh, and the township's square, with exhibits farm
equipment, along with some rockets from Woomera that landed in the
neighborhood. We were at William Creek longer than we'd planned due
to a
problem with the van's muffler that required an emergency repair. That
gave me a chance to experience my first real Outback pub, the kind
I'd only read about, where people leave souvenirs: business cards,
driver's licenses, underwear. The owner of the pub used to be in
IT in Adelaide. Now he serves drinks in a town with a population
half the size of my high school math class. Makes you think, don't
it?
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