Today was our first full day of travel on unsealed roads. The stretch between Coober Pedy and William Creek must have been very exciting to drive along three days ago, as soon as it was “open”. The ground looks as if it was not only slippery but very soft too. We stopped to take pictures of the state of the road and I am sharing one of them. Apparently if anyone drives down a road that is officially “closed” they are met at the end of the track by the police and there is a fine of one thousand dollars for every tyre that is on the road.
Our journey was not a fast one – after all we are on holiday and my purpose for being on this trip is to take photographs. At one of the creeks – which is now dry as a bone – I wandered down to see what it looked like (we had stopped for a cup of tea and all I had in my hand was my tea mug), when I stopped under one of the oddly shaped trees and looked up I soon retreated to the vehicle to get my camera. I changed the lens so I could zoom in because what I saw were two budgerigar. I spent a little time taking more photos while several four wheel drives with camper trailers zipped past and all gave cheery waves. No doubt grateful that they had no-one in their vehicle that was as photo-mad as me! The birds were not afraid of my proximity. I thought they would have gone by the time I returned with the camera but they were exactly where I had first seen them.
I walked a little further along the sandy creek bed after I had exhausted all the shot angles with them and found a bird feeding her youngster. Again they did not seem to mind me being below them and pointing a big black camera in their direction – the food exchange just continued as energetically as before I had reached them.
Budgies are native to Australia and are always green with yellow heads. This is their normal colouring. The blues and whites and different colours are created by breeders of tame birds. We used to have hundreds of Budgerigars when we lived on the farm but the sprays that were developed to kill the grasses that grew among the wheat was responsible for their disappearance. The spray was residual which meant that the grass seeds were unable to germinate and the grasses did not grow – good for wheat farmers but bad for the birds that used to exist on their seeds.
Apart from the budgerigars and ground larks that were quite numerous, we saw no more wildlife today. It is amazing that you can travel so many hundred kilometers and not see one emu, one kangaroo or one lizard or snake. There was plenty of colour: lots of greenery and plenty of colourful wildflowers.
We have a hazard light that tells us our new fuel filter is choked up. We must have some very dirty fuel in our tank. This has so distressed us that we will try to find somewhere that has the filter we need (we hope that we can actually get there without the motor seizing up) and then we shall head home as directly as we can. We did not drive out to Lake Eyre as we had wanted too – we could have been stranded out there and that frightened both of us. Nothing is worth taking that sort of risk for.
AJ
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