Mildura, Victoria to Coober Pedy, South Australia - 1073 kms, 11:00 hours.
Setting out from Mildura to my next stopover at Coober Pedy, it isn't long before I cross the Victoria-South Australia border. Security is pretty heavy here. Everyone is on the lookout for Public Enemy No. 1 - fresh fruit! Since I have been careful not to have any, I am waved through.
My classical music collection finally runs out and I switch to Embedded FM episodes 126 to 130. For some strange reason, the car GPS tells me I will reach Coober Pedy at 1:00AM. OK, I was a bit late getting out at 9:40 - so what's new? Obviously, I forgot all about the time zone differences. By, hey, waidaminute, Cobber Pedy is in SA and the half hour difference should be in my favour. Turns out the car GPS does not know about the Gwydir Highway and is routing me through Adelaide. That is not what Google Maps told me. Fortunately, the map was still on my tablet and it does not need a connection to let me zoom and pan about. I spent the next several hours studiously ignoring the GPS voice instructions, spotting the next town on the tablet and looking for it on road signs. Eventually, the car GPS catches on. I had plans of eating in a nice place in Port Augusta but with the time I lost, I stopped at Morgan and had a bite. Which was a good idea because most places in Pt Augusta turned out to be closed for Xmas.
The moral of the story is that the map on a car GPS slowly becomes obsolete. Mine was 7 years old. Use Google maps and make sure you have access to it on the road even if there is no mobile coverage. At the start of the journey, check for the distance and/or arrival time. If it looks fishy, zoom out and check the route.
Once I am out of Pt Augusta, the traffic clears dramatically and it is large stretches of empty road. If you prefer your sightseeing through a windshield and a scene like the photo above, this kind of road trip is for you. If not, then you are normal. I stop at Glendambo to refuel. Probably for the first time, I stop at a time with no mobile coverage - or at least Optus mobile coverage. There are plenty of warnings on the road about wildlife AND cattle - there are not many places with both elsewhere. You take them seriously because you see plenty of roadkill, usually attracting crows. I stay alert and soon spot a family of emus crossing the road.
I know exactly what to do. I pull over and start taking pictures.
Soon, another car spots them and pulls over and THEY start taking pictures too. The paparazzi spook the emus and they take flight - no, they can't fly - they scamper away.
I get back on the road and this time I spot some sheep crossing the road!
Along the way, I come across Lake Hart. This is part of the Lake Eyre basin. It is a lake system that occasionally fills up with water and the rest of the time it leaves behind extensive salt deposits. When wet, it may have pink algae blooms. When dry, it is kilometres of white salt pans. Driving along the highway, you can spot several such 'lakes'.
There are some stark rest stops along the way. The furniture is said to made from recycled plastic. If your are really lucky, there may be a toilet.
My embedded.fm podcasts run out half way so I just listen to them all over again. Elecia's whinge about OpenOCD (for a while I thought it was about people who obsess about using open software all the time) jogged a memory about a similar bug I encountered a long time ago. We were using an internal piece of dogfood for a project. It had a complex XML config file. Make one small mistake and it would give this strange error message that gave no hint of the original syntax error in the XML file. Digging into the code, I found it looks for the XML config file in the usual place. If not found, it would look in a few other places before giving up. Make one small mistake and it triggered the same error as the file not being found. So all you got was the error message about not finding the file in the last place it looked! Once the bug was fixed, our productivity surged.
Over here, you can drive for kilometers and not see a vehicle. Occasionally, you see a B double or a road train. And sometimes, you see a cow. Now livestock on the road is OK but these roads are have a speed limit of 110 kmph! To top it all, this cow was in no hurry. A few of its mates soon sauntered along. Then they proceeded to cross back and forth. What is a tourist to do except stop in the middle of the road and take pictures.
Occasionally, you pass signs saying GRID.
This warns you that you will be going over a cattle grid at 110Ks. Being in the middle of the road, it is probably to see that cattle do not wander out of their grazing area. Walking on to a road with steel eggshells zooming at 100 kmph is apparently OK.
Also spotted was a zebra crossing in the middle of nowhere. Now that is good idea! Why weren't all those cattle I saw not using it? Possibly because it is actually markings so that the road can be used as a landing strip by the Royal Flying Doctors Service. This sterling organisation services an area the size of continental US (7 million km2) using a fleet of planes and medical staff. They are funded by the Federal and State govts and donations from ordinary people. They are often the only emergency medical service in remote areas. If you are close to these landing strips, your waiting time should be less than that in a waiting room at a city doctor's office.
The sun is starting to set and sitting in a car seat for hours starts to hurt after a while. What is the point of having a fat ass when it feels like you've been sitting on the ends of your femurs the entire time? Random Thought: Why does Herman Miller not make car seats? I squirm around trying to reduce the discomfort without compromising safety. The car is on cruise control and all I need to do is cover the brake. Being on cruise should avoid inadvertent speeding. The advertent speeding is unavoidable. I have a feeling that the speeding tickets, if any, will come home to roost soon. Travel Tip: After a while in the hot sun, the back of your T shirt gets clammy. Take it off and wear it back to front for a while.
It is 8:45PM when I roll into Coober Pedy but it is not exactly dark. A dog ambles across the road on the way but it is dark and I am too jaded to stop to take a picture. I rush into the Outback Grill and manage to catch the kitchen just before it closes. I soon settle down with a beer and kebab - a nice way to end a long drive.
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