Courting Bustards |
The roadhouses are a staple of track-travel. They have food, petrol, often have rooms and are the center of their respective communities. They have amazingly eclectic collections of stuff, both for sale and as decorations (as we shall see later).
Diesel sticker shock - with two 90 liter tanks this will get painful as we go north
But...critically, they have ice-cream!
And a yacht club (for the once per decade where there is water in the lake! Yes they had a catamaran on a trailer)
An ocher pit just north of Maree - the reds and yellows are hydrated iron-oxide. Ocher was widely used in painting, body decorations and the preservation of skins.
Nancy modeling the latest OZ desert fashions!
It was good to know we were ok to be on the road. We found out later they were serious about the SEVERE penalties for driving on muddy roads (because you can ruin them). Fines are charged by the wheel ($2000 per/wheel we were told) to discourage big trucks from even *thinking* about making a run for it.
Interesting iron stone - differential cementing created some pretty wild shapes in the boulders in our campsite.
Diamond Doves |
The Diamond doves are tiny little things, about 20 cm. We found these birds near our camp, as we settled in for the night under the trees. Supposedly there were some wetlands here where we hoped to find lots of birds first thing in the morning.
Male White-browed Woodswallow |
We did find lots and lots of Woodswallows
Female White-browed Woodswallow |
-some of whom were granting us severe looks for walking in *their* woods!!!
Masked Woodswallow |
Zebra Finch |
Sadly the wetland was pretty dry and the big flocks had moved on.
Brown Falcon |
Wattles |
hot bath at Clayton Bore |
Clayton Springs is sometimes a wetland - but it was now dry. In the parking lot there was a shower - and a large tank that could be filled with warm and rather fragrantly sulpherous bore water! I took of opportunity to wash of a few days of road dust
As with most things out here, ingenuity is rampant just to get things to work!
Pink-eared Duck |