Roadhouses

The vast distances between any sort of habitation in the desert means that there needs to be some way of alleviating the boredom and of course re-fueling between towns, so the roadhouse was invented. During our journey up the red centre from Adelaide to Tennant Creek, a distance of some 2000 kilometers, there is very little to punctuate the desert landscape and so the appearance of a roadhouse on the horizon was a cause for excitement.

These roadhouses are strategically placed so that just as the needle on the fuel tank creeps below the 1/4 mark and the possibility of running out of fuel in the middle of the desert is causing the level of stress to rise to potentially bowel moving proportions, a roadhouse suddenly appears on the horizon and the relief is tangible.

Each roadhouse is very individual and offer a range of services.

The first roadhouse we stopped at was Spud’s Roadhouse, briefly mentioned a couple of posts ago. Spuds Roadhouse consisted of a shop, a bar and a dining area and a very large dusty unsealed area labelled ‘Caravan Park’. Spud’s specialty was collecting car registration plates. We refueled, parked up for the night and left early the next morning.

• 

• 

• 

The next roadhouse we encountered was The Kulgera Roadhouse, again cunningly located in the middle of nowhere, 413 kilometers north of Coober Pedy and 275 kilometers south of Alice Springs. Their speciality was a vast collection of ladies brassieres that had been, for no apparent reason, fixed to the ceiling of the bar. There was also a handwritten notice on the wall of the ladies toilet, (not the men’s though), requesting that the toilet seat is closed after use to avoid “surprises”. Upon further enquiry, we found out the “surprises” are the snakes which regularly visit the toilets in search of water and are disappointed when they find the lid has been closed!

Just as we were leaving a media circus arrived escorting the solar cars doing the solar car challenge from Darwin to Adelaide. The cars were very small single seater contraptions, obviously covered in solar cells. It was a very windy day and we heard that several of the cars had been blown off the road by the force of the wind. No-one was injured thankfully. The vast number of vehicles escorting the environmentally friendly solar cars, however, were definitely not helping the planet.

• 

• 

• 

Next was the Wycliffe Well roadhouse. Wycliffe Well roadhouse advertises itself as the UFO centre of the Australian Outback. The site was established as a result of “frequent” UFO sightings in the area and a guy called Lew Farkas decided to capitalise on the notoriety. The car park was full of strange alien mannequins and crashed spaceships. We refueled, purchased some embossed alien themed shot glasses and left in a hurry. The shot glasses have since started to lose their embossing so they are now mostly just shot glasses.

• 

• 

• 

•