Central Australia Adventure June 2012, day 23

Central Australia Adventure June 2012, day 239/07/12
Woke this morning to find everything soaking wet, had gotten so used to clear skies and no rain that we left all our tables, chairs, and kitchen gear uncovered.
Not sure how much rain had fallen through the night but it was enough to wet everything and leave a nice layer of mud on the ground, and turn the red dust all over the trailer into sticky red mud.
While we packed up or soggy belongings it continued to rain on and off, what a pain !
When we got out onto the track we could see that things were going to be a little different compared to the last few weeks of outback driving, the next 135 or so kilometers turned out to be very slippery indeed even with the small number of cars that head been on the track ahead of us the track was already churned up.
In the rear view mirror the trailer swayed from side to side, collecting a thick layer of mud as we travelled along the slippery track, coming for the dry hard gravel tracks onto the sticky mud I could feel the car working harder to pull the trailer along the track, the kids thought it was great, they were having a ball, especially when we hit the pools of muddy water on the track, spraying the windscreen and reducing visibility to nothing for a few seconds, can't say the same for the wife though, she had her eyes closed most of the time, expecting us to end up bogged on the side of the road, or rolling over.
We stopped at Lake Eyre South for a break and to take in the view, the sheer vastness of this lake was amazing, it was like looking out over the ocean, it's hard to believe that it is dry most of the time.
Not far along the way we came across a jack knifed semi which was in the middle of the track, just coming out of a creek bed, it was a little tricky getting by while accelerating to keep the momentum up, once passed that there were no more major obstacles to negotiate, that cheered the wife up no end, the mud continued on and off most of the way to Marree, where we arrived without incident.
Arriving at Marree we were found out that the Birdsville track was already pretty messy and was likely to to be closed as was the Oodnandatta track, this meant some decisions needed to be made regarding our route ahead.
Our intended route was going to be the Birdsville track north to Birdsville , then the Birdsville Development rd east to Quilpie. Considering the information we had at hand we elected to miss the Birdsville track and head south from Marree, to Leigh Creek then home via Broken hill, this route meant only a few more kilometers of unsealed road.
It rained fairly heavily on and off for the next few hours so I think our decision to get off the unsealed roads was a good one.
We travelled as far as Orroroo 50k west of Peterbouough, where we have booked into a self contained cabin for the night so we can wash and dry our clothes, have hot showers and reorganize our selves, tomorrow we head for Broken hill, hopefully the rain will have eased by then.







Cheers
Dave T