Oodnadatta Track - William Creek

After 500km on the blacktop we found ourselves on an unsealed red dusty road, but an iconic one at that.

We passed through the Pink Roadhouse which was cool & we stopped for a look around & something to eat. It still amazes us how people live in these remote areas.

The old Ghan Railway line used to weave its way along this track and there is still parts of it standing. The steel has gone but the mounds and bridges can be seen.

Every 16k there are cottage ruins where people used to live when they built the line, they run for hundreds of klms. These are quite interesting also but it's hard to create a picture for the boys in terms of how these people must have lived. Great all the same.

880km from Uluru and we pulled in at William Creek. They call this the gateway to Lake Ayre & the pub is legendary too. In by 6pm, set up and fed by 7pm, in bed by 7:15pm....not before I snuck over to the pub for a couple of frothies mind you....

Once again, the pub was staffed with international backpackers. Much like The Blue Heeler & Daly Waters pubs, the walls are littered with paraphernalia, this time business cards and hats. Great stuff and very cool.

In the small world we live in I met some guys from Logan River who were off to the Simpson before going to the Birdsville Races. Nice guys and we had a good chat about the places around but they tended to skite about the places they'd been & what they'd done. I didn't say too much until we got on the subject of tyres, one of them had blown 2 tyres at $400 a pop over 1000k's and he told me don't buy Coopers. Well that'll do me!!! My Coopers are sensational.

I told them I had done 22,000 in the last 4 months over some of the hardest country you will ever see, and didn't baby them by any means (Nat will attest to that) and I haven't had a problem....no chipping, side walls perfect, just bloody great. He asked me what pressures I run and I told them the different ranges for the different terrain & he looked bamboozled... The silly bugger runs them at 40-45psi everywhere!!!! I guess he is made of money... For someone who has been everywhere and done everything, he doesn't know much about tyres....

All good and they were great characters, a big part of this journey has been meeting people like these.

Off to bed and 500 odd klm to Flinders Ranges tomorrow.

Jase.......