On the way to Port Headland, I saw a car alongside the road
and an Aboriginal waving, so I stopped.
He'd run out of petrol, then flattened his battery: While he had a jerrrycan
of petrol, he needed to be jump started.
He said he and his wife were from Coober Pedy, traveling around visiting
friends & relatives, and had been there for two days broken down. I asked about food and they said they were
OK, but I opened a pack of biscuits and shared them around: They were quick to grab as biscuit so I left
the pack with them. We connected up
leads, and shortly a couple of stockmenn also rolled up. In summary, it turned out his immobilser had
been engaged and needed resetting, requiring bringing the car to a mechanical
garage: As it was an automatic
transmission, it couldn't be towed and needed to be loaded onto a
truck/trailer, such as most towing companies now use. One of the stockmen said Indee Station may
have one so as there was nothing more I could do, I agreed to drive on to Indee
Station ("...only about 30-40 km up the road" and then another 9km off
the highway on a gravel road into the station) and ask them to help. On arrival, they said they had no vehicle
capable of loading the car so in the finish we passed the information on to the
Police. Meanwhile, I discovered they had
a caravan park on the station so I booked in for a couple of nites.
NB: I have
subsequently been warned that it is very dangerous to stop for anyone in remote
areasI am doubly happy in this case that I didn't come to grief and that I was
able to help.
Every evening at 5:30 PM they have Happy Hour - they have an
open section (roofed over) in the middle of their homestead, with living
quarters on either side. It has a table
that seats about 30 people and it was full both of the nites I was there! A retired quarry owner was there and
volunteered to take a group on a tour of the station & quarry for a
donation to the RFDS, an opportunity quickly seized by half a dozen
people. It was quite amazing, he showed
us two railways running thru the station, they are about 500m apart and one
belongs to BHP & the other FMG; they run parallel virtually all the way to
Port Headland, but they cannot agree to share so each have their own rail. Gina Rhineheart is in the process of building
a third parallel line as no share arrangement can be negotiated. He also gave us a good background into the
quarry, which was set up to provide basecourse for the railways (he was happy
they built two!).
The large bridge was nearly underwater not many months ago,
as the area was virtually an inland sea after heavy rains. Hard to imagine, when at the moment it looked
pretty dry and thirsty country. The
station is 250,000 Ha and runs about 1,000 head of cattle - understocked at the
moment due to previous drought. They were
hit hard financially by the sudden halt in exports to Indonesia and relatively
recent drought. The station was wiped
out by a cyclone a number of years ago and the owner spent three years with a
brickmold making the concrete blocks to build a new, cyclone safe
homestead. It was hit again in 2007, and
while much damage occurred, the homestead survived. They were mustering at the time so while we
didn't see the boss cocky, his wife was supervising meals for the stockmen &
Happy Hour at the station: Apparently
the owner came in the second evening with a bad gash in his thigh but said he
wasn't going to hospital: A fellow who
knows him and saw the wound reckoned he should go to hospital, and also
reckoned his wife would order him to go!
A pleasant stay, the tour was fascinating and a small glimpse
into an operating station.
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