FLASHBACK: In which a few Mossies DIE - Dalhousie Springs 10 Oct, Day 29 (Or: Of Bitten Bums for Brief Relief)

“They will die, they will die, they will die” – Withnail and I

Does the use of National Parks for our camping mean that we are complete eco tourists following the lead of those who know what is best for the environment? Or are we just after a cheap camp site?
I would like to think I was leaning towards the former. After all, I am notorious for my very careful recycling system at home, much to the raised eyebrows of Shileen, and the occasional groans of Darren. I also don’t like to kill anything, including insects. Should staying at a National Park camp site require you to keep your tread light, and let the natural order of things subsist? Well, I thought so… however, when it came to the mosquitoes that were at the shower and toilet blocks at Dalhousie springs, I realised all that had to be put to one side. Even going to the loo would put you in the line of fire of the mossies, and there were many war stories around the campfires there, of bitten bums for brief relief.

Darren had warned me that the showers were as bad. However, I was not going to in there without a fight. I was determined to have a shower. I needed one I was sure, and I was not going to be beaten back by a 5cm flying syringe.
A shower I needed, and a shower I would have. I was goin’ in…

Darren looked pretty impressed by all this talk, until, as I was saying it, I pulled out of the cupboard the yet unused can of mosquito spray. Yup, I was goin’ in.
I felt a bit sheepish going towards the shower block (middle of the day – less mosquitos) carrying this enormous can of spray. I hid it under my towel, thinking that the release of all these toxic chemicals was hardly a way to behave in a National Park, and perhaps I should not be seen with such a weapon of what I hoped would be, mass destruction. Fortunately there was no one around, or I don’t think I would have had the courage to unleash the can on them.
I peered into the shower space. They are lovely and clean, don’t get me wrong, however I could see that Darren had not been exaggerating that there were a large number of bloodsuckers that planned to shower with me. I was not going to beaten, I was going to have that shower, and nothing would stop me.
I stuck me head out of the cubicle for one last check for any eco campers around, and took a deep breath.
PSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTT
PPPSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
And another for good measure …
PPPPSSSSSSSSTSTSTSTTSTSTSTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
PSSST PSSSSST PST

I ducked back out of the cubicle, and let the mist settle, and tried to look very ho-hum and nonchalant as someone went into one of the loos.
After about 30 seconds I looked in the cubicle. No movement. I moved forward and locked the door behind me, still holding the can of spray, ready for anything. I got undressed using one arm – no mean feat.
PSSSSTTT, PSSSST
Got the final 2 mosquitoes I could see –

Victory would be mine! Cleanliness would prevail!

I got the shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and facial cleanser all ready in the shower and slowly put down the can ready for …
cold water… No hot tap? No…hot….tap?
Now, I am as happy as the next person to have a cold shower, when I am expecting a cold shower. But this? This was such a let down. All that effort! All that murder of mossies, for nothing?
PSSST – just got another in time.
I turned on the water anyway, but it felt uber cold to the war weary; I just didn’t have the heart to go through with it. Beaten back at the last line of barbed wire, I had to retreat to the safety of the caravan, hoping that there would eventually be cleaner times ahead for me.

FLASHBACK: Disaster at Dalhousie - October 10

Because I was a bit under the weather, Darren went for a drink with the group we had just met, and I elected to lie in the caravan and watch another episode of Pride and Prejudice – THANK YOU Clem, for lending it to me. Clearly there is something about living rather rough that takes me closer to the classics. Perhaps it is feeling like the great unwashed 90% of the time that makes me think of the 18th Century? See also my demented rant in another blog, entitled Vanity Fair.
But DISASTER STRUCK
As Darren was passing me the computer, the hard drive on which I had put the series, along with a whole load of other films, DROPPED ON THE FLOOR. I sent Darren away while making encouraging noises rather than growls, as he was expected at another camp fire, and I tried to put the film on.
…Then I tried to safely remove hard drive from computer
…Then I wondered what the ‘generic volume’ was, that was preventing me take the hard drive safely off the computer.
…Then I tried to shut down the computer using Control, Alt, Delete
…Then I switched off the computer at the switch
…Then when I switched it back on it wouldn’t go to the password page
…DO YOU SEE WHERE I AM GOING WITH THIS?

Anyone who has lived or worked within a hundred yards of me will know, I do not tolerate computers lightly.
Darren returned after about an hour and a half. He found me still up, and only just had managed to switch the **&$”^^ thing off, and remove the hard drive safely. But the hard drive had whirred and sneezed and coughed, and the computer had been clearing its contents as ‘unreadable’. No more videos for us – WAAAAAAAAH!

As you can imagine, I was quite eloquent on the stupidness of the hard drivewhen he returned, the contents of which I am unable to replicate here, due to good manners.

FLASHBACK: Dalhousie Springs 9 Oct – NOT listed in Lonely Planet Australia 13E , travesty! Victoria gets a little over heated...

At last we arrived at Dalhousie Springs. It had taken a whole day to drive there, and only 180 kms / 112 miles travelled.
We were now on the western edge of the Simpson Desert. Those travellers who left Birdsville to go across the Simpson Desert usually pop out of it here, so there were people here who looked more sand worn and frazzled than us – a miracle.
There were not too many travellers at the camp site – after a journey like ours, I am not surprised! There are really only 3 ways there, the way we had come from Oodnadatta; or across the Simpson Desert; or the way we were going to leave: to Mt. Dare hotel, then to the highway or north to Alice.

Famous for its Artesian spring that bubbles up at a heavenly 37C, it was not long before we were both in the water. Having seen some of the other springs, we were ill prepared for the size of it. It was like a small lake, and I imagine on the cold days in the winter months the hot water would be very welcome. Today was pretty hot, and we probably didn’t really need to get hotter, but again warm baths are few and far between in this game so we plunged in.
It was like swimming in an enormous deep bath, and pretty blissful. There are masses of minerals in the water and when we got out I could feel them on me, and we had to wipe ourselves down with packeted washcloths we had bought for when no water was available, just to feel clean of the minerals.
Darren went for a shower afterwards, but came back telling me there were swarms of mosquitoes in them. Hmm, be dirty, or bitten? No contest. Went to bed very ‘washcloth’d’ instead.
The next day we spent recovering from what had probably been one of the hardest roads we had been on – the bogging not withstanding. We had another afternoon dip after Darren had spent about an hour peering out of the caravan watching a group of people put up their tents. He had been amazed it took them so long! I told him not everyone was mister speedy-man, and hauled him off to the water.
While we swam around once more, the group who had been putting up the tents came for a dip, and we were soon all chatting away – one of the ladies was a teacher, from Brisbane – and knew Wiley! Odd to be talking about publishing while swimming in a hot bath on the edge of the Simpson – I took the trouble to give ‘em a quick plug – you never know where business will come from!

I started to get hotter and hotter in the water, there were rubber rings you could use, and keeping my feet out of the water certainly helped. I can’t understand why no one else over heated too? In the end, after the men had been chatting with each other, and us girls had been talking about life coaching (as you do on the edge of the Simpson, in a hot pool), I decided that my head was probably going to explode so I made the move to get out, and all followed. As we went back to the caravan I got redder and redder in the head, even Darren looked quite alarmed at me, admonishing me for not drinking enough water in the day ( blah blah blah, heard it all before) and told me to put a cold cloth on my head. We had to get the tea towel (which was of dubious cleanliness), wet it in cold water, and I wrapped it around my head like a turban.
When Darren saw me, he asked what on EARTH I was doing, he had meant me to put the towel over my face, (how was I to know, am I psychic?), and he stood me in the shade and fanned me with something (I couldn’t see I was under the towel), until my face seemed to resume its more usual hue. I had to retire for a lie down – all because of a hot bath, how pathetic am I?

Flashback - Dalhousie Homestead Ruins – STILL Friday Oct 9!

After traversing a hellish number of fields of rocks and after passing the Pedirka railway siding, (a four walled ruin with one wall division on a stony plain; the siding was appropriately described on our map to ‘have been one of the loneliest places on the railway line’), then driving over what looked like a moonscape, we eventually arrived at the Dalhousie ruins first leased in 1872. We were pretty ruined ourselves. Still, after miles of nothing ruins are pretty exciting stuff, so we dutifully fell out of the car, happy not to be jolting around for a while. We had only travelled 60 Km since we turned off from the Hamilton Station, and we had been travelling about 4 hours, including a break to get bogged, and one for lunch. This travelling lark can be exhausting.

It had really seemed as though we had been driving for ages on the moon; though here we were, looking at ruins of a settlement from a previous century, surrounded by enormous palm trees. Bizarre. There are 2 theories how the palms got here, one is that the Afghan camel drivers used the area as a campsite while they were taking supplies to settlers, and planted them; the other, that the contractor for the South section of the Overland Telegraph line, Ned Baggott, had them planted when he bought the lease.

What Darren wanted to find was the natural springs that had fed the telegraph station. He headed for a group of palms that also had loads of rushes growing around them, making them almost impenetrable. I, predictably, started to read a sign about the ruins, then looked up and Darren had, predictably, disappeared. We call this ‘the cattle dog effect’. Just like a dog off his leash Darren will, at any moment, disappear – into a crowd, at a market, the airport, a shop, a pub – and it seems, the middle of nowhere.
Silence. Just me, palms, some ruins and a LOT of sky.

After a moment I heard scrabbling sounds and Darren calling to me that he had found a spring. No sign of him, just a bunch of talking bulrushes. They were taller than me and densely growing, however when I approached them I saw there was the narrowest gap, and feeling a little like Indiana Jones, I pushed my way through. I came out into a small clearing at the base of some palm trunks. There was Darren grinning from ear to ear by a muddy bit of water – the spring. Feeling less than overwhelmed at the discovery and more concerned with mosquito population count, I hovered for a short time admiring the muddy pool. He then remembered there were meant to be 2 or 3 springs and crashed off through the bulrushes again. I headed for the sunshine.

He had soon found the second spring, and this was more interesting. Here a small stone trough had been fashioned by the spring for the homestead occupants. It was in a larger clearing than the previous spring, but still surrounded by palms, making it a rather magical and secret oasis. It did feel that the ghosts of previous generations were walking her collecting water. The spell was broken by the high whining of hungry mosquitoes and Darren eyeing the larvae in the water. We retreated to the sunlight and back to the car, for the remaining 12Kms to Dalhousie Springs camp site.

FLASHBACK -– A Stony Lunch - Still 9 October

After all the excitement of being bogged, we still had not had lunch. Darren and I left our deep sandy tracks by the side of the road with grumbling stomachs. We continued to look for somewhere to stop. It was still a sandy track but had little shade, the trees were too sparse, and even after what we had been through, lunch with shade is always the ideal. After about 15 minutes of further driving, we decided that we would stop after the next corner – REGARDLESS of shade. We were determined.
As luck would have it, the next dip and corner drove us out onto a wide stony plain. We would have had to be under a millimetre in height, to catch some shade. Still, the up side was that a stony plain meant that driving off the track was OK. We were travelling on the Pedirka Track, the aboriginal meaning of pedirka is ‘hailstones’ – which gives you an idea of the landscape, though very few stones were loose; they were all embedded into the ground.

I made sandwiches while Darren got out the compressor to blow up the tyres again. The plain was like a vast driveway with smooth red pebbles concreted into it. As I ate my 28th lunch of the trip, I thought that this is one odd country, with its diverse landscapes just around the corner from each other. After being bogged in the sand a quarter of an hour ago, now I was on a Mosman drive.

FLASHBACK: We get bogged (Oodnadatta to Dalhousie Springs – 180kms /112miles ) Friday 9 Oct

So if you can cast your mind back to my last blog that was not a rant on literature,or an apology, you may remember we were at OOOOOOOOOOdnadatta. This was on Friday at the end of our 4th week….

Awoke just outside Oooooodnadatta, convinced it was Saturday. It was to be an early start so we had even checked the night before, when the shops in town opened on a Saturday so we could buy provisions. Went to town and bought provisions. Friday is our ‘pay day’, so is eagerly awaited each week. O does have TWO food shops, which was a really big thing, so we had scoped out where the locals seemed to buying and went there. We only had a few things to buy, but with tomatoes at $1.50 each (75p), it was just as well we had got provisions in Marree. That has been one of the challenges, trying to work out where the cheapest food might be in the coming 7 days. Prices out here are huge! William Creek, a town of 2 (true), further down the Track was selling a loaf for $6 – that was the record. Anyway, we eventually got all we needed, I wrote a post card to parents, and we were off, at last, to the eagerly anticipated Dalhousie Springs.

The Dalhousie Springs are part of the series of Mound Springs which bubble up from the artesian basin across this area of Australia. (see previous blog on Darren’s baths…). At Dalhousie the water bubbles up a perfect 37 degrees creating an enormous warm bath where one can swim. They are just West of the Simpson desert and only 183Kms (114 miles) from Oooooodie.

At first it was pretty easy driving on the Oodnadatta track, then we left it and took a smaller Northwards track. Still not too bad. First we went through ‘Fogarty’s Clay Pan’, an wide gray land with the track going straight across, either side there were marks where cars had thought they knew better and had clearly got bogged in the clayey ground. But we were cleverer than that. Next came the ‘Hamilton sand dunes’ which were red sand dunes running perpendicular to the road, so we were going up and down over them for miles, while masses of green foliage was (surprisingly) growing out of the dunes either side of the road. Quite beautiful. We met some people working on the road, which we thought was pretty tough on a Saturday - until After Hamilton Station (no, cattle, not train), we took another right turn off onto a smaller road.

It was approaching about 1 o’clock, and I wondered if Darren was getting hungry, so we started to look for a shady spot. We were on a sandy track with lots of trees either side, so we easily found a spot, and stopped under a tree. We were not quite in the shade so Darren tried to move forward a bit. No go. The car went n-o-w-h-e-r-e.

Darren got out. I got out. The back wheels of the car were rather deep in the sand. He looked. I looked.

I kept quiet. Very quiet. I didn’t suppose that suggestions or directions would be welcome at this point. Instead, I asked if we needed to uncouple the trailer. Darren hoped not and hoped that reducing the pressure in the tyres further would help.

After he had reduced the pressure in all the tyres, and used the shovel to dig away the sand from the back tyres of the car, he got back in the car and I stayed out.

Engine on, into gear… it looked hopeful for a moment until the back wheels started spinning. I was sure I had read somewhere that it was bad to let them spin as it made them go even deeper, so I shouted/screamed for Darren to stop.
The sound of the revs died away. He got out. We both looked.
We uncoupled the caravan, and used a dead bush nearby (think grocery box size tumbleweed), to put under the car wheels to give them grip when they moved forward.
Back in the car, engine on, into gear….very slowly the car moved off with the branches crunching and disappearing into the sand. The car was out!
We were both pretty pleased and allowed ourselves a little “ Yay!”, and then turned to look back at the stranded caravan.
Darren then said that he thought he might be able to reverse back at a different angle and recouple the caravan and pull it out. He started to reverse but it was clear that he was going into soft sand again and would get bogged so we cancelled that idea.

I then came up with the grand plan of trying to turn the caravan around, as the ground behind it was much firmer (eg: more terra firma), and the car probably wouldn’t get bogged. Darren amazingly thought this wasn’t a bad idea.
Move the caravan. Sounds good in theory eh?
Darren got one side of the trailer part of the caravan that links to the car. I got on the other side. The idea was to lift the jockey wheel and heave the caravan around. The jockey wheel is attached when the car is not attached to the caravan, to keep it standing straight.
So, according to the plan, we lifted and h-e-a-v-e-d.
And, LIFT and HE-EA-VV-E.
AND LIFT! and HEEeeAAaaVVve….
Two very puffed people and a small pile of moved sand.
Clearly my idea was not so brilliant after all.

Darren realised there was nothing for it but to bring out the big guns. (Why did he wait so long?).
One of the many ‘must have’ items, that had just sounded superfluous expensive parafanalia in the comfort of Fairlight, was dug out of the truck…
The ‘Snatch – Um – Strap’. Green, heavy duty, 10cm wide and 10 metres long. Describes itself as ‘Green and Mean’.
The box even has a picture of the Incredible Hulk on it (this amused me at the time, but I kept it to myself). Maybe that was Darren needed – to ‘get angry’.
“Don’t make me angry – you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…”
Darren, of course, was still pretty ‘tra-la-la’ about things, as was I. I had no doubt he was going to get us out. Such blind faith in a wife – how sweet.

In order not to drive in the deeper sand, we needed about 15metres of strap (16 ½ yrds). He therefore tied the massive snatch strap to a thin piece of rope (I tried not to look doubtful), and this to a thinner strap from the roof of the car. He then attached one end to the car and the other to the trailer of the caravan.
He got in the car. I stood far out of the way of any potential flying missiles.
The car started, there was a pause, then the strap/rope/strap took the strain… Joy! The caravan started to move! Then – PING’somethinng’ gave, and the strap-rope-strap went flying into the air.
Amazingly, on inspection, it was not the small thin rope that could didn’t hold, but the smaller strap. Clearly only the green Snatch-Um-Srap was the monster for the job.
We were beginning to feel the heat by this stage – you will remember that the reason we had wanted to move the second time was because we had parked not quite in the shade. It was now past 2 o’clock, and this was hot work. We were also being incredibly polite to each other, I was even keeping very quiet and doing what I was told – things must’ve been bad!
We decidied that Darren was going to have to reverse again into the softer sand and reattach only the 10 metre green monster to the caravan and car. Despite it’s rigid appearance, Darren explained that the green strap has some ‘give’ in it, which helps take the strain. I once more put sticks in front of the wheels of the car and the trailer. Once again I retreated to a safe distance. Darren got back in the car and the green giant took the strain. The caravan moved. Then moved some more. The car was not going down into the sand and all looked good as they moved off….

Have you ever watched a water skier learning to ski?, or a water skier too heavy for the engine of the boat, trying to pull them out of the water? As the boat moves away, if there is not enough power to get the skier up, and if he continues to hold on, the skier slowly gets pulled under the water, like a submarine diving….

This was what came to mind as I watched the jockey wheel at the front of the caravan (which does not spin around easily), get pulled deeper and deeper into the sand which eventually stopped the caravan and the car.
Now things did not look good, and it was hot.
We were however heartened that there had been movement, and the ‘fix-it man’ (can he fix it? Yes he can!) was here. He wound the jockey wheel up to tip the caravan back slightly, so moving its centre of gravity further back. Then, just as a skier needs to lean back to get pulled out of the water, he put the car once more in gear and slowly pulled the caravan out of the sand to the road.
Success! I silently vowed not to suggest lunch when we are passing large sandy areas. We still hadn’t had lunch, but we were pretty jolly pleased with ourselves as we took off once more, after we had put the Incredible Hulk back in its box, both agreeing that we both never doubted for a moment that we would get out.

Excuses excuses, and the solution

Ok OK! My apologies for the great big FAT gap in my writing (a mere couple of months…)
Excuses
As you may have gathered, writing a blog is proving not to be as easy as I hoped…. The main problem is a complete lack of electricity to run the computer, unless generated by our selves with the (er) generator. The problem with this is the high level of noise I perceive it to make, as opposed to the low level Darren perceives it to make. That is the 1st problem.
The next is that even if I write it, I then have to be somewhere I can get internet connection – which did not prove easy in the red centre.
The next problem is how long it takes to put it up onto the net, even if I have written it first, as copy and pasting onto a blog sometimes doesn’t work (just don’t ask me why).
The next is…… is…. Well, I could just say that I have written it and then my dog ate it, which is as likely an excuse as when I used it at boarding school. No one believed me then either.

Outcome?
My report: Sporadic worker , could do better. – which was pretty much the gist of my school reports too.

Solution
SO what now?
I have decided to continue with the blog – mainly because when I hit Sydney last December people said nice things to me about it (EXCEPT the sporadic part which they didn’t like), and because I will be glad I did it when I have returned to the land of Fairlight, flushing loos and employment in August.

So, please accept my apologies for really not keeping up to date. I am sure you won’t be surprised to know that I had a record 22 detentions at school for not doing my homework in time….
I realise I have 2 choices, to continue writing about October and try to catch up, OR start again from where we are NOW, and occasionally do a ‘FLASHBACK’ – when I will write about our travels before Christmas. The latter is what I have decided on, or I never will catch up.
So here are a couple of flashbacks, and then I shall tell you about what we are doing now…