Position 31 12.0S  136 49.3E

The scenery has changed from scrubby woodland to the occasional Acacia with lots of saltbush plants.

The water pipe is still running North following the highway.  Like the cloud forming above this hill.

We are now officially in the outback travelling along the Explorers (or Stuart) Highway.  Named after John McDouall Stuart who on his third attempt in 1862, was the first white man to go from south to north of Australia.  Note the bullet holes.

Plants have become smaller,

Not as succulent as in the Arid Botanical Gardens – they aren’t getting watered.

The ground is red dirt and the plants are small and globular.  These are important fodder plants and base of the sheep industry in South Australia.  Because they have such high salt content – the plants that is – they are also fire retardant.

These plants are commonly known as bluebush, saltbush or samphire are called chenopod – pronounced keeno-pods.  The arid zones of America have cacti, in Africa you get euphorbias, in Australia you get chenopods.  Strong root competition for water in chenopods results in characteristic uniform spaced plants.  Actually they go through random, clustered to uniform spaced patterns.  Imagine parent, drop seeds , juveniles grow pattern becomes become clustered.  Parent dies, young start to grown and are now in competition with each other.  Strongest, fastest growing wins and uniform pattern results.

Geologically much of central Australia was covered by a shallow sea.  It has since evaporated leaving behind salty clay soil – another characteristic of chenopod plants is that tolerate salt.  Within the plateau are a string of lakes, the larger ones are salty, but smaller ones form when the rains fall.  This Lake Macfarlane. 

Anther chenopod.

You can just about make out the western myall tree (Acacia papyrocarpa) in the background and then the Flinders Rangers beyond.  It’s really long-lived (like thousands of years) and the branches used for fence posts for years.

Staying in a small campsite in Woomera whose claim to fame is that nuclear tests went on here.  However, according to the literature I’s famous because it is the largest land-based missile and rocket range in the western world.  In a few day’s time there are extensive highway closures for about 2 weeks as testing of something is about to take place.

Here’s some of the (old) missiles on display, you can just about make out Paul to the right of the missile.

Here he is again looking interested.

And again with an engine behind him.

And again with wreckage of Blue Streak.  The British labour government had to stop funding this as it was costing so much money.  Paul thinks it was also the last rocket the British government funded.  How does he know this?  Well he knows a lot of boring stuff from Radio 4 – he is in melt down as we have not been able to get free Wi-Fi for ages and he has almost run out of podcasts. 

Technical details, yawn, yawn.

Inside of a hi-tech something.  You can tell I’m so interested in this lot.  Paul not impressed with me, says that I drag him around gardens. I said that I don’t mind if he doesn’t come with me.  He said I could go on my own but he’ll come along!  So I say don’t moan when I’m happy for him to go looking at mechanical bits and I read my book.