« More TV personalities need a Colbert sense of humour | Main | One Big Day Out »
February 3, 2007
Trip to Adelaide for a week
So I'm currently on vacation. The first day of which was spent driving the 1540km from Alice to Adelaide with Nat. We switched every couple of hours so that the other person could relax or nap or just zone out without consequences. This is pretty much required because the driving is so monotonous.
The actual road itself (South Stuart Highway) is in pretty good condition and has very few bends or dangerous curves. The real danger in driving the outback is the wildlife. At dawn and dusk, you will encounter more 'roos, cattle, camels, emu and other animals then at any other time of the day.
Taking that into account, once out of the danger zone (insert Top Gun theme music here) you can cruise along at a decent pace cause the landscape is flat, other traffic can be seen close to hours away and in the Northern Territory the speed limit is 130km/h (new this year, was previously unlimited..). The crossover to South Australia doesn't change the scenery much but the legal speed limit decreases to 110km/h.
We stopped for petrol at various places along the way, most of which have populations that include dogs, cats, cattle and sheep and are written on chalkboards to ensure you've got info from the latest census (most likely had at the pub the previous night).
Lunch break was in Coober Pedy, the source of 90%+ of the world's opals. It's an interesting place that slightly resembles an alien planet. There are heaps (pardon the pun) of mounds of white dirt piled up everywhere from the mining around town. The word around town is that although mining in town is prohibitted, most houses have anywhere from 5-50 rooms in the basement as 'renovations' tend to pay for themselves.
After that, the landscape added a few more rolling hills and the occasional salt lake which tended to be water-filled as the region had received some hefty rainfalls over the holidays. Port Augusta was the first major city in SA that we cruised through and was an alright town considering the smell of industry dominated the fragrances wafting through the open windows.
Having left at 6am, we finally arrived in Adelaide around 9pm local time, which translates into a 14h journey all up. If you wanna do the math and find an average speed please realize that everything is approximate and we did try to respect the speed limits at all time...
So nice to see a beach again.
Posted by Dr.Unk at February 3, 2007 1:57 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)