8th and 9th Nov 2010 : Hawker – Lyndhurst
After overnighting at the Flinders Ranges Caravan Park in the small town of Hawker we continued 192 kls north to Lyndhurst, passing through several small villages on the way such as Copley comprising a general store, Leigh Creek pub, a mechanical repair come servo and a pie shop. The pie shop is famous for quandong pies, these are apparently a wild fruit and make a delicious fruit pie, Nancy forced me to have one.
We stopped for a look at Leigh Creek this is a very modern little settlement that caters for the Leigh Creek coal fields, small but well set out, very clean and environmentally established, nice school and shopping centre. I believe Leigh Creek is the main centre for the Dep Transport in this region, every vehicle that drove into the shopping centre had 3-4 people all with Hi Viz clothing either from the mines or road authority. It turns out that Leigh Creek was originally located 13 kls to the north but as a result of valuable coal reserves around the area, Leigh Creek was relocated to its present location in 1982 and hence the emphasis on tree planting etc to create such an attractive oasis in what you would call a fairly desolate region. The huge open cut coal mine produces brown coal for Port Augusta power generation, the station was modified specifically to be able to burn this particular brown coal, a two kls long train carts 10,000 tonnes per day.
Lyndhurst is 37 kls north of Leigh Creek and is the last of the sealed road, this is also the turn off point to the Strzelecki Track (yes I’ve spelled it correctly it’s up to you to pronounce it). This track is the road to Moomba oil and gas field and further on to Innamincka, it was surprising how many large trucks and fuel tankers were heading in that direction, the drivers telling me it’s slow going and hard on gear.
We camped in the Lyndhurst Caravan Park, that means a closed off compound alongside the pub on hard packed gravel, power but no water, showers and toilets were clean and we were able to draw hot water from the laundry for washing dishes etc, the water out here is bore water and not suitable for drinking so we conserved all of our on board water for cooking and drinking. We stayed two nights at Lyndhurst enabling us to drive the 80m odd kls of gravel to Marree where we had arranged to do the flight over Lake Eyre.