We have had a very interesting 24 hours. After a very hot day yesterday we were surprised, at about 10pm to hear some rumbling. It was thunder emanating from lightning which heralded the arrival of a desert storm. The lightning flashed and the wind blew, shaking the van and making it creak - like all good noises in the night. It then rained, large spots with the wind blowing them headlong into the van. In about thirty minutes the storm passed over but we continued to hear it as it moved away to the north east.
Eventually we went to sleep but the wind continued through the night. We awoke this morning with a howling south westerly at our door and a temperature of 15 degrees. Sadly there was no moisture on the ground when we stepped out. Today the wind has continued unabated and the temperature reached 25 degrees. That in itself has been a welcome change.
What a change and what an opportunity to continue our foray into the outback. Firstly we toured Woomera. Woomera was initially conceived in 1947 and was a joint operation between the British and the Australian Governments. It was the site for launching British experimental rockets between 1964 and 1970 and later, satellites. In 1960-1972 NASA operated a deep space tracking station at the (relatively) nearby Island Lagoon. The testing range covers an area of 270,00 square km which includes the Great Victorian Desert and extends into WA.
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| 271014 Housing at Woomera |
There are rockets aplenty to see in Woomera and photographs of some follow.
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271014 Black Arrow - British rocket for launching
satellites up to 560km high |
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| 271014 Seaslug - surface to air missile |
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| 271014 Skylark - high altitude research rocket |
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| 271014 Jindivik - target aircraft |
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| 271014 Petrel - supersonic target rocket |
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| 271014 Blue Steel - air to ground missile |
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| 271014 Recovered material from a Blue Streak firing |
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| 271014 HAD rocket- high altititude density research |
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| 271014 Black Knight designed for high speed re-entry data |
After Woomera we headed off to Roxby Downs, which is the main residential site for workers at BHP Billiton's Olympic Mine, about 10km away.
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| 271014 Power delivery to Roxby Downs and Olympic Dam Mine |
The mine is a major oxide, copper, gold deposit producing copper, uranium, gold and silver. The site hosts an underground mine and an integrated metallurgical processing plant. Its capacity is 200,000tpa of copper and 4,300tpa of uranium, plus gold and silver. We could not access the mine.
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| 271014 Entry gate at Olympic Dam Mine |
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| 271014 A distant shot of BHPB's Olympic Dam Mine's surface facilities |
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| 271014 Another distant shot of BHPB's Olympic Dam Mine's surface facilities |
Roxby Downs is a modern mining town but we did notice one outstanding thing, most of the people, kids and women included, are a trifle on the fat side.
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| 271014 Main street of Roxby Downs |
Next we went to Andamooka about 30km from Roxby Downs. This is another significant opal producer. Some say its opals are better than Coober Pedy's. There did not seem to be as many homes built underground, but the mullock mounds were just as impressive. It is heating up now so mining activity is minimal. They have kept a few old miner's cottages to demonstrate how the original miners lived.
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| 271014 Andamooka |
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| 271014 Old miners' cottages at Andamooka |
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| 271014 Another view of Andamooka |
This was another interesting and informative day. The wind is still blowing like you would not believe but the temperature has stayed down. Yippee!
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