Strezleceki

 

Innaminka, in South Australia, just over the border from Qld, is a small, so called town, mainly servicing the oil and gas fields and pastoral properties in the area, mainly comprises of a servo and a pub.

After topping up with water and fuel, we continued our trek, turning south, the Strezelecki track stretched before us into the distance. In the early days, the track, from Innaminka to Lyndhurst, a distance of over 400k, was all dirt, now there are long stretches of bitumen, mainly because of the oil and gas fields and the increasing number of trucks using the road.

Our journey along the track would take us about 200k down, then turn off and travel along station roads skirting the Gammon and Northern Flinders Ranges along their eastern side.

When the bitumen ended the familiar rattling of the corrugations and billowing dust clouds began. It didn’t take long till I stopped and let the tyres down to cushion the bone shaking effects of the rough road, with this done and a much lower speed, the ride became more bearable.

About 100k from Innaminka, Moomba, with towers of pipework and other structures, like a city skyscape in the flatness of the desert came into view. With this base of operations for the surrounding gas fields came an increase in truck traffic on the road. The double and triple trailer road trains rumble toward you, signaling their presents with a cloud of dust on the horizon. It is best to slow right down and get off the road to let them pass. Depending on which way the wind is blowing, you ether get lucky and miss their dust trail or get swallowed up in the white out of their wake.

A camp for the night at Strezelecki Creek crossing, finding a patch of shade on the eastern side of a tree on the creek bank, we hid from the heat of the sinking sun. the days in this area were hot and getting hotter, reminding us it was getting too late in the season to be out in this country.

After a cool nights rest, some 50k further on, the area called the Cobblers appeared. The Cobblers are dome shaped mounds of sand forming small dunes around clumps of Nitrebush. They presented a nightmare to early explorers and settlers trying to navigate their way through this maze of lumps in their way. Today the road has been bulldozed through them.

Another 50k on we came to the turnoff to Mt. Hopeless, where we turned off. With less traffic on this road, it was a lot smoother to drive. Across the Strezelecki Desert we drove till the outline of the Gammon Ranges appeared on the otherwise flat horizon. As we passed Moolawatana station homestead ,on the right, a track led off to the distant hills. Knowing the track from a previous trip, we took it and in a few ks came to Terripina Springs, a creek cutting its way through a rocky ridge line. This would be our camp for the night.

Under the shade of the river gums, with the red cliffs towering on both sides and the silence hugging us, we checked out the pool of permanent water, fed by a spring under the rocks in the creek bed, then rested and gave thanks we could experience such beautiful places.

Next day it was back to the station tracks, passing between Lake Frome and the Ranges, heading South, eventually reaching Yamba on the Barrier Hwy, fueling up, we crossed the Highway and continued south, again on station roads, our sights set on reaching Danggali Conservation Reserve and crossing through on our way to Renmark.