Coober Pedy – Erlunda

Spent most of the day today on the road but had two highlights along the way.


The first was crossing the border into the Northern Territory, a first for nearly everyone in the car and second meeting a young boy who had affectionately become known as “Dutchie”.


When we pulled up at Erlunda, we saw a small motorhome that looked a little like the one we had seen at Woomera, sure enough it was Dutchie, his Mother and Father. Josh was very excited at the prospect of having his little playmate again and wanted to check and make sure that they were staying at the same caravan park, and yes they did. Chels and Josh played for ages with Dutchie rambling on in Dutch and no-one could understand him, but they all seemed to be having fun.

Apart from this, we pulled up the middle of what seemed no-where for lunch and everyone got their first real taste of being in the outback. There was nothing as far as the eye could see. One side note here is the lack of rest stops on the road, particularly rest stops with toilets, almost non existent, so you either had to hold on or find one of the few trees about the area.


We also got our first chance to get up and close with a road train. It was four trailers long, thankfully it was parked in the service station and so we did not have to overtake it or worry about it overtaking us.

We stopped at about 4:00pm and just relaxed, after all that is what holidays are all about.

We did learn a big lesson here that we had thought of, but had not really taken too seriously to this point. Water is not readily available in all of these areas. There was no fresh drinking water available at the park and you had to purchase it if you wanted it. The normal bottles of water were available, or you could buy a ten litre box of water for $8.30. We bought one and a spare, in case we could not get water further on.