Coward Springs
When we visited Maree in October 2010, for our flight over Cooper Creek and Lake Eyre, we were told about the delights of Coward Springs.
Maree is a small town, north of the Flinders Ranges, which used to be a junction on the Old Ghan railway line. It is also the southern end of the Birdsville Track and the eastern end of the Oodnadatta Track (the Ood).
Coward Springs, on the Ood, about 130km west of Maree, was also a station on the Old Ghan.
We decided to attack Coward Springs from Roxby Downs as it involved less dirt road driving (still 185km each way) and we hadn't been to Roxby Downs.
We didn't want to drag our brand new caravan over dirt roads, so we left it at the Roxby Downs caravan park (free) and headed on up the Borefield Road and turned left onto the Ood at Bopeechee.
By now we realised that the Ood passes close to the shore of Lake Eyre South, in fact so close that we had a picnic overlooking the Lake and paddled in it. I even immersed my body in about 25cm of incredibly salty water after wading 200m through the (very black) mud ... it didn't seem to get any deeper, but I could feel myself floating.
On to Coward Springs where Greg and Prue have created a campsite and wildlife reserve as well as restoring the engine driver's cottage as a museum. What enterprise ... camp fee $10 pp/night. Time for a cup of tea. Attempted to "stoke up" our single burner gas stove ... no go ... plastic parts broken ... must have happened when it fell out of the back of the car. Disaster! What are we going to cook our dinner on? Open fire of course. Management supplies fire "boxes" with grids over the top for the purpose, and we'd brought firewood ... phew! Shame about the cup of tea. Footnote: I carefully dismantled the stove, we glued the offending plastic parts with super glue ... it now works.
Out with the tent ... never been out of the bag ... mildly challenging. Tent for sleeping in? No, tent to store all our gear so that we can sleep in the car, on an air mattress, blown up by mouth. Mental note: get bellows.
Next morning we took the waters in the natural 29 degree spa before checking out the Bubbler and Blanche Cup mound springs and returning to Roxby Downs.
The following day we "did" the BHP Billiton Olympic Dam above ground mine tour. Fascinating, but not necessarily ecological. It's predominantly a copper mine, the uranium is a "side line". Currently mining is underground, but there's a huge ore deposit 350m below the surface. The plan is for an open cut up to 6km long and 4km wide, which will go down 1km to the bottom of the ore body. That's a hell of a big hole!