Following on from Woomera , we head north again to Roxby Downs . It was about 70klms , and through more barren looking country . There must be something in this area judging by the road kill - there were so many kangaroo carcasses on or beside the road . The road was a bit ordinary as well , very bumpy , not smooth at all . There's a lot of traffic that uses this road as well , as it is access to Olympic Mine - a gold , lithium and copper mine - there's 700 kms of roads UNDERGROUND !!!
Roxby Downs is another very tidy town with lots of houses a Woolworths supermarket , golf course , swimming pool , sports ovals and a caravan park . Lots of temporary housing for workers . There's a few different villages for mine workers , and an industrial area out at the Olympic Dam mine as well - Really surprised us both !!
Andamooka was only 38klms away from Roxby , so we headed out for a drive . It's another opal mining area , not as large as Coober Pedy , but similar landscape , as can be seen in the next photo of the approach into the small township .
It was also close to Lake Torrens , another large salt lake . We flew over it 16 years ago on the way back from our Lake Eyre flight , and were suitably impressed - enough to go for a drive out to it .
Stopping on the way out beside a creek bed , we found some ripple stone in the creek bed - more evidence showing us this was all underwater millions of years ago .
You can see the ripples go different directions in different layers .
The track brought us out to the lakeside , the lake just disappeared into the horizon , bloody enormous !!
We hadn't reached the white salt , and wouldn't be finding it by driving out there either , so it was time for the drone . The little white dot just below middle of the photo is the ute .
Another view .
Then we found the mysterious creatures of the lake .
There were even some skeletons of one haha .
Even the kangaroos get in on the action here , with lots of paw prints filling with salt crystals .
A grass seed seemed to be in a strange place .
Salt crystals up close .
We stopped at the creek and had some lunch , disturbing these kangaroos .
This Big Red Kangaroo didn't go much on us either , he was over 1.8m tall !!
After a few days in Roxby Downs , we headed south again . I did a rough count on the way out of town , and I got up to 133 dead kangaroos in the first 30 kms from Roxby Downs - I stopped counting then !!
Back to the highway and on to Port Augusta . The van needs some new brakes after 11 years and we could get them replaced at Port Augusta , so that was our next stop .
No comments:
Post a Comment