13th April 2013

12^th April 2013

We spent 4 nights at Mount Barker and during that time caught up with a couple of good friends down in Adelaide and joined them for dinner at a nice Vietnamese Restaurant.  Adelaide Hills is a beautiful area, its many small centres are all so attractive with their old charm houses and tree lined streets each small town has its own special attraction and charm.

We took the opportunity while having a few days break to ensure we were well stocked and everything was up to scratch for our trip up the centre to Darwin. Wednesday night I had a talk to Nancy regarding the merits of leaving earlier than we had been and so on Thursday morning we got away by 8:45am instead of 9:00am and as she climbed back into the car after handing the caravan park key in at the office she informed me the lady in the office had told her about a prize winning butcher shop that wasn’t very far away. Of course my objections and comments regarding stocking up the previous day, fell on deaf ears and besides it was probably on the way. Fifteen kilometres later in a totally different directions to the quickest way my GPS was set on, we finally found this nearby butchery where Nancy delightfully purchased half a dozen sausages for tea. By this time the GPS had stopped chanting “Re calculating” and took us on the very picturesque, long, hilly and windy tourist route (that took twice as long and used a lot of fuel). It was a lovely drive that also included several kilometres of rough dirt road before we finally ended up out on the highway north of Port Wakefield on our way to Port Augusta where we topped up with fuel. My back went out while getting the van ready the day before and hadn’t settled down over night but although I was in quite a bit of discomfort it was ok driving, I tried to get into a physio at Port Augusta to no avail. So we kept forging on. Eventually pulling up at the servo at Pimba where the road forks off to Woomera (5kls) and Roxby Downs (80+) and in the other direction Coober Pedy – Alice Springs – Darwin etc. we had covered 510kls and that’s a long way with a big rig behind you.

This is a free camp area where most travellers seem to pull up and park overnight, it’s a large compound in the middle of nowhere not a tree to be seen anywhere, not a breath of wind, hot as buggery and very friendly flies.

Road-trains pass by on their way to Roxby Downs Olympic Mine and trains pass by just far enough away that you can’t hear them. The trains are very frequent and would have to be the longest trains I have seen, general goods, refrigerated units and dedicated ore trains from various mines. Last night we saw the Indian Pacific go steadily by on it’s way to Adelaide.

12^th April

Friday – we left the van at the Pimba and drove the eighty odd kilometres out to Roxby Downs. Roxby Downs is located 560 kls north of Adelaide and was built to support the Olympic Dam that is now a thriving community of 4500 residents and a real oasis in the desert. Looking around the town it is clean and modern with every facility, well laid out with plenty of trees and greenery. Talking to residents it would appear they thoroughly enjoy living in the remote town where there is a strong community spirit.

Olympic Dam Mine

100% owned by BHP the ore body is the world’s fourth largest copper deposit, fifth largest gold deposit and the largest known uranium deposit, it also contains significant quantities of silver.

It has an interesting history, to quote: it was named after a nearby livestock watering dam located on Roxby Downs pastoral lease that was built to water stock in 1956 the year the Melbourne Olympics were held.

In 1975 one of the world’s largest multi-metallic ore bodies was discovered on the pastoral lease, based on theoretical studies of the formation of copper deposits.

A low budget ten hole drilling programme was undertaken in 1975 and exploration was about to be given up when the tenth hole intersected 178metres containing 2.1% copper and .6kg per tonne uranium indicating a major discovery. Although geologists and drillers were looking for copper, they were surprised to also find minerals not previously found together.

Olympic Dam was acquired by BHP Billiton in 2005.

The mine itself is underground and the processing infrastructure to support it as in smelter and refinery is all situated at the Olympic Dam site, the place is colossal. What it means is that the mined raw material is processed and the finished products of copper, uranium, gold and silver bullion are dispatched to customers as finished products.

As usual we were a day late for the mine tour, they are conducted on Monday and Thursday and of course we were there Friday, but a very pleasant lady in the tourist information centre offered to show us a fifteen minute video all about Roxby Downs so sitting sipping a flat white, in the equivalent to a Gold Class movie theatre we enjoyed a mine visit and history lesson without the flies. It was very interesting.   

  

From Roxby Downs we continued another 30 or so kls further out to Andamooka a remote opal mining settlement, it is a surprisingly large settlement but talk about a shanty town. A few reasonably respectable looking dwellings are starting to appear but the majority are a mishmash of shacks in all sorts of disrepair dotted in no particular plan all over the place interlinked by unformed dirt roads and interspersed with evidence of small time mining activities.

After spending a pleasant evening chatting to out neighbours and laying back staring at a starry sky watching satellites cross the sky and some other terrestrial object burn out entering the earths atmosphere like a giant sky rocket racing across the heavens ( actually I thought the mad Koreans may have got it all wrong), anyway we got away about 0830 and travelled 350 kls up to Coober Pedy very un-interesting drive through salt bush plains and what I call slow hills that is ones that are slight and gradually climb and prevent you getting into top gear for lengthy periods.