The Oodnadatta Track

The Oodnadatta Track follows a line that Aboriginal people walked long before Europeans used it, and for the same reason: it links a chain of mound springs where artesian water reaches the surface. The Overland Telegraph followed that water. So did the old Ghan railway. The track is what remains.

It runs roughly 620 kilometres from Marree to Marla, all of it unsealed.

What the road is like

This is a maintained gravel road rather than a four-wheel drive track, and in good conditions a well-prepared two-wheel drive with clearance does travel it. That said, four-wheel drive is the sensible choice and it is what almost everyone uses.

The reasons are corrugations, sharp gibber stone, bulldust and the fact that conditions vary enormously with the grader schedule and recent weather.

Rain changes the situation completely. The surface turns to a slick clay that is genuinely undriveable, and the road closes. Driving a closed outback road in the wet causes deep damage to the surface and attracts substantial fines in South Australia. Wait it out.

Tyres, again

Punctures are the defining mechanical experience of the Oodnadatta. The gibber is sharp and it works on sidewalls rather than treads.

Two spares is normal. So is a plug kit and a compressor, and so is dropping pressures for the corrugations and accepting a slower average speed.

What to stop for

Lake Eyre South is visible from the road, and the far larger Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre North sits beyond it. The lake fills rarely, on a cycle driven by rainfall in Queensland arriving months later down the channel country. When it does fill it is a major event, and scenic flights out of William Creek are the practical way to see the scale of it.

Coward Springs is the best stop on the track: a campground on an old railway siding, with a small artesian spa built into the bore and a wetland alongside it that supports an improbable amount of birdlife for the middle of a desert.

The Ghan ruins appear at intervals the whole way: sidings, bridges, water towers and fettlers' camps, abandoned when the line moved west in 1980.

William Creek is one of the smallest towns in the country and the pub is the centre of it.

Oodnadatta and the Pink Roadhouse are the main service point on the northern half.

Fuel and water

Fuel is available at Marree, William Creek, Oodnadatta and Marla. Those gaps are long, prices are high, and running the tank low between them is the most common way a straightforward trip becomes a serious one.

Carry more water than the distance suggests. The bore water along the track is artesian and often hot, mineralised and unpalatable, and it is not a substitute for what you bring.

Season

April to October. Summer here reaches temperatures that make a breakdown genuinely dangerous rather than merely inconvenient, and there is very little traffic to rely on.

Communications

Coverage is limited to the settlements. Carry a satellite communicator, and tell someone your intended route and timing.