The Road to Daly Waters

When I look back on the hundreds of photographs I took on a recent road trip, from Melbourne to Darwin (up the Stuart Highway), I’m impressed by the huge numbers of shots I have of blurry vegetation taken from a moving car window. It says something I think, about my determination to try and capture the essence of this vast, unending Australian outback landscape.

That was back in July – just four months ago – but still, the images of stark white tree trunks, dry creek beds, sage green saltbush, termite mounds, burnt-out roadsides and a very particular kind of solitary vastness, are stuck fast in my memory. I have painted a good number of paintings since the trip (www.bluetumb.com.au/adrienne-rewi), inspired by my lasting impressions; but words have been harder to channel. Some places have been easier to write about than others. One of those is Daly Waters.

Devil's Marbles

Devil's Marbles

My Australian friend Leanne (who lives in Christchurch, New Zealand), flew across to do this trip with me. We hired a new, crazy orange Holden Commodore and we hit the road. One of her express wishes was, that we stay at least one night in a classic Aussie pub. Daly Waters Historic Pub seemed ‘on paper,’ to fit that bill. So on Day Nine of our trip, we left Devil’s Marbles at around 8am after a dawn walk around those magnificent boulders and headed north, bound for Daly Waters, which sits 916km north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and 620km south of Darwin.

Daly Waters Historic Pub

 As we were to discover, calling Daly Waters a town is something of a stretch. The 2016 Census listed just 9 permanent inhabitants and essentially ‘town’ is just a fancy name for the roadhouse, which in turn, is just a fancy name for the Daly Waters Historic Pub, which was originally built as a supply point for drovers and (according to the sign), holds the longest continuous liquor licence in Northern Territory, dating back to 1893. The current building was built in the late 1920s.

I talk a lot about the vast emptiness of the outback and that is certainly a lasting impression. But in truth, these wide-open spaces are filled with a minutiae of detail. When I read back on the detailed, illustrated journal I kept throughout the trip, I read about roadside trees filled with flocks of zebra finches; fast trucks and slow camper vans; the sobering remains of crashed cars; the sad looking Brahmin cattle herds hanging around dry creek beds lined with red rocks and white gums; large mesa away in the distance, still huge despite the distance.

I recall the vast array of roadkill, struck down by passing road trains and tourist vehicles – the dehydrated cattle carcasses, kangaroo, birds of prey; and the ever-changing parade of road signs for places like Tennant Creek, Threeways Roadhouse, Banka Banka Station, Bootu Creek, Attack Creek and Churchill’s Head Rock. And I’m reminded of the weird little roadhouse settlements we passed every few hundred kilometres, which set us to wondering why anyone would want to live in such an unforgiving landscape.

 I remember Elliott, population 350, which was established during WWII as a staging camp for troops heading north. It distinguished itself in my memory for its tumbles of pink and white bougainvillea, it scattering of unkempt houses and its For Sale advertisement for a black leather couch, $500 and its “large range of tyres.” We topped up the petrol tank there – as we did at almost every roadhouse along the way – and we noted the large flock of red-tailed black cockatoo in nearby trees.

It was almost 2.30pm before we finally drove in to Daly Waters. It was 25-degrees (in mid-winter) and I was instantly captivated by the huge scarf of pink bougainvillea cascading over the pub roof and verandah. Every man and his dog seemed to be enjoying its shade as they swigged back their cool drinks and icecreams.

Forget the dusty red ‘main road’ and all the filth that comes with that, I homed straight in on the bunches of bananas hanging off the palms by the pub’s main door, the pink and white flowering frangipani, the giant jacaranda pods hanging off trees, the giant cacti and the rowdy crowds of people and apostle birds.

The pub staff were an unexpected treat – all handsome young men from foreign countries – Poland, Brazil, Germany and the like - young backpackers paying their way I guess; and the pub’s now-famous interior was packed with memorabilia and a somewhat shabby collection of women’s bras hanging off the ceiling. Apparently women have been hanging up their bras here since the 1980s. It doesn’t bear thinking about really and at no point during our stay did I feel quite frivolous enough to add to the collection.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Daly Waters for me, was the camping ground – packed to the gills with expensive camping vehicles. The Grey Nomads as they’re called here in Australia – (often but not always) retired couples who have cashed up and taken to the roads of Australia. You see them in their thousands on the outback highways during the Australian winter, which quite frankly, is the ONLY time you’d want to visit Central Australia. The temperatures here in summer (40-degrees C plus), make the idea of travelling too appalling to even think about.

Some seem to settle in for weeks at a time. The ‘hairdresser’ for instance, worked her hair magic during the day then appeared to have a part-time job at the pub at nights, serving customers their dinners. I could think of worse ways to travel a country.

We chatted with a young couple from Melbourne, who were sitting in the cool evening air outside their elaborate camper van.

“We’ve been on the road for two weeks, so we’re only just cracking into it,” announced the man, proudly, perching his beer can on his large, black-singleted belly.

I could relate to that. We’d only been on the road for nine days and it felt like we were “just cracking into it” too.

I still feel rather fondly towards Daly Waters. There was a certain quirky ‘holiday magic’ about the place that drew me in. The mad array of people, the live country music night, the Beef’n’Barri (Barrimundi) barbecue (with salads and the schnitzels that Aussies seem to be particularly fond of), the tropical plants, the variety of bird life – and all the other things we never even got o explore in the interests of an early night and an early start for Katherine the next morning. But that’s a whole other story.

Coober Pedy, South Australia

Long before I ever reached Coober Pedy on my recent road trip from Melbourne to Darwin, I had received plenty of advice:

“Don’t go near the place, it’s a hole!”

“What do you want to go THERE for?”

“Dreadful place – not worth your time.”

“I can’t understand why anyone would want to live there!”

And so on.

 But I was determined. I’d seen pictures of the place, so I knew roughly what I was in for; and I was intrigued by the notion of human beings choosing to live underground to escape their inhospitable environment. There had to be SOMETHING there – apart from the obvious opal mining activities – to draw people in and keep them there.

I knew as soon as soon as I saw the first sign of opal mines on that vast, unending landscape, that I was probably wrong – that really, it could only be the possibility of striking it rich in opal mining that would bring people to such a desolate and dusty place. There was nothing but salt bush and red dirt for as far as the eye could see – and, as we got closer to Coober Pedy itself, there were also the giant earth mounds and a skyline full of cranes.

We arrived at Coober Pedy township at around 3pm on July 2. It was 17-degrees, sunny and very glary. The skyline was dominated by huge wind turbines, piles of dirt, solar panels and mining operations. A cluster of scruffy buildings lined both sides of the ‘main street’ and dazed-looking tourists wandered about in their droves. They had the look of people who thought themselves lost, that perhaps they had missed the turn off to the ‘real’ Coober Pedy’ and had instead, found themselves in this broken-down, dusty little ‘wild west’ film set. Even the giant Coober Pedy sign on the hill, mimicking its Hollywood counterpart, didn’t seem to put them at ease.

With only a few hours of daylight left to explore, we checked into our Underground Motel – for what is a stay in Coober Pedy without a sleep in an underground bed? – and headed for ‘the sights.’ To be honest, they took a bit of finding.

   

The first underground church we visited was empty and a little characterless, so we headed out of town to the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Holy Prophet Elijah. We eventually found it at the end of a dusty road, surrounded by mines – an impressive exterior façade, carved into a huge bank of solid rock.  Construction began in 1992 and was completed in 1993.

 

The whole complex houses a church, community hall, religious school and parish house, and varies in depth from 3 metres to 17 metres underground. It has impressive stained glass and deep within the church itself, there’s a cool sense of calm - an obliviousness of the barren outside world that I found rather pleasing. Apparently more tourists visit the church than there are parishioners but apart from an avid amateur photographer who was determined to teach us all he knew, there wasn’t a soul about; and the Mediterranean style garden that the parishioners had tried to grow amounted to little more than a few beaten oranges and some wispy olive and pomegranate trees.

It turns out - not surprisingly – that very little grows in Coober Pedy. Between the low rainfall, the high cost of water, the solid sandstone and the lack of topsoil, plants don’t really stand a chance. The fact that the whole place is surrounded by stony treeless desert, is probably a pretty good hint.

Coober Pedy is small – between 1,762people (2016) and perhaps 2,500. It is known as a the Opal Capital of the World – given that it supplies most of the world’s gem-quality opals and that it has over 70 opal fields and the largest opal mining area in the world. None of that does anything to beautify the area. The ‘normal’ above ground housing stock was minimal and ‘wanting’ and with summer temperatures heading well over the 40-degree mark, the stable coolness of an underground dwelling would likely be much more appealing. Little ‘chimney air vents’ poking up out of all this hills, hinted at dozens of underground homes, offices and accommodation providers.

After a quick foray into the Umoona Mining Museum and Shop (very well done), I’d seen enough about opals to last me, so we headed for the Underground Bar at the Desert Cave Hotel. I found myself as puzzled and dazed as any other tourist around me – was I in the right place? Could this be it? In short, it was a completely wasted opportunity to make something quite special. Instead, their crowning glory appeared to be “The Only Underground Poker Gaming Machines in the World.”

To make matters worse, the recommended Chinese restaurant down the road was closed. The Bar and Grill was packed with people and holidaying kids. The Greek restaurant was closed and the Pizza Bar was overflowing onto the street. So it was dinner at Coober Pedy’s most expensive restaurant – I vaguely remember Atlantic Salmon. Tasty as it turned out.

We were aiming for Uluru the next day (a 10-hour drive), so we were out of our underground motel before dawn and on the road. All up, we had about six hours awake in Coober Pedy – although one could be forgiven for thinking it was all a dream.

But for me, it comes down to one thing – would I go back? And the answer is, yes.  Six hours wasn’t enough for me to get the photographs I wanted, nor to talk to some of the people who call Coober Pedy home. That would have been the most interesting thing of all for me. Because there sure as hell isn’t too much else about the place to recommend it.