Aus 12 - Woomera

We have now been in Australia for 42 days. We have driven from New South Wales, up to Brisbane in Queensland and across along the Barkly Highway through many small Country towns right into the Northern Territory. Here we found ourselves in the Red Centre and in terrain that was described as desert. (I never knew that desert land was so full of plants)!

We visited Alice Springs, the MacDonnell Ranges and drove out to Kings Canyon to do the rim walk. We visited an Aboriginal business who introduced us to the Nomadic hunter gatherer lifestyles of their ancestors and we took that bit of knowledge into our visit to Uluru and Kata Thuja. On leaving the Red Centre we have driven South down the really interesting Stuart Highway. There are so many tales of intrepid exploration associated with the creation of this road, that it had a blog of its own!

So now, we have driven over 7,000 kilometers and have left the Northern Territory and we entered South Australia which started with a visit to the Opal Mining town of Coober Pedy which is still very much a desert town as was described in the last blog.

As we drove South we had noticed signs for a couple of hundred kilometers warning people off straying off the road into the desert. The land was regarded as military and private. Not that it looked very different from other desert landscapes we had driven through. Sandy soil. Largely flat. Very few trees and largely scrubby looking low plants, bushes and grasses. Occasionally there would be some cows clustered near a watering hole or creek, and there the vegetation would be a bit denser and the trees a bit taller, but there was not a huge variation in landscape.

Along the road occasionally there would be the carcass of a dead Kangaroo being devoured by birds. Mainly crows and some buzzards. These guys did not have to work hard for their supper as there was a steady supply of road kill. Sadly we also saw one dead cow on the edge of the road. Not all cattle were fenced in.

As we travelled South away from Coober Pedy we passed close to the settlement of Woomera and after parking up at the Spuds Roadhouse for the night, not far from Woomera, we decided to visit Woomera where there was a Museum and some military display of rockets and planes.

So Woomera was created as a Military test site towards the end of 1947. It was a vast area which was sparsely populated and it was decided that it would be used to test rockets and bombs and other military hardware. It does mention that efforts were made to move Aboriginal communities away from danger but it is unlikely that all Aboriginal people operating in the area were contacted or if they were, whether they heeded the advice to keep away from the military activities.

Now the village, designed to accommodate several thousands of military personnel, has shrunk to a permanent population of under 200. It has streets and houses and public buildings, and a cafe with a small shop. But it seems a bit like a ghost town. I guess it is owned by the military but is largely surplus to day to day requirements. Quite recently some accommodation was used to accommodate refugees but they have since been relocated.

The displays like to concentrate on the fact that early communications satellites were launched from Woomera and less, if nothing, is said about the testing of nuclear bombs! For that information you need to look on Wikipedia.

All the films available to explain the history of the place no longer worked.  So these might have provided more illumination.

What you can see is lots of brightly painted shiny rockets which look almost like toys or art! These items are dotted around for tourist inspection and don’t really display much information about their deadly purposes.

What is given many column inches, is the story of the intrepid surveyor who helped to identify Woomera and its dessert surroundings as a ‘suitable’ test site for military purposes. He is described as one of the last true Australian explorers as he created useable tracks and routes through the area with his engineering talents.

We left Woomera and its slow trickle of visitors to carry on South. Our next anticipated stop was the Clare Valley, one of South Australia’s wine regions. For that to work we would have to pass out of the desert and into productive farming land and soils. And this sort of just happened and by the time we reached Port Augusta, the population densities massively increased, roads entered and left the Highway and the road signs were now full of information about other places down the road!