The first stop after leaving Lake Eyre this morning was the village/roadhouse of William Creek which consists of a pub, a senic flight business in a single building, a bush campground and a gas station attached to the pub. One of our guide books described it as an iconinc outback pub, it certainly is an interesting building. Seems to be mostly built from railway sleepers. Perhaps the most interesting thing about William Creek is that it is located on Anna Creek Station the largest cattle station (ranch) in the world. At 9142 sq miles it is just a little bit bigger that the country of Israel. The station was originally established by Sidney Kidman who realized that the only way to run cattle successfully in the Australian outback was to have a very low ration of cattle to land.

We spent the morning retracing our route of yesterday along the BoreField Road and then rejoined the Odnadatta Track. Along the track we stopped at a few points of interest, either old railway sidings (with ruins of railway buildings, broken bore machinery and in one case an old cast iron water tank) or natural springs. This part of inland Australia sits on top of the Great Artisian Basin, a large underground water deposit that coverds 22% of the Australias area and is estimated to hold 15,600 cubic miles of water. Along the Oodnadatta Track this water comes to the surface in natural springs in mound formations and provided natural staging places for early settlers and the early railways.

Yesterday while planning our current little side trip I wondered about the name of the Borefield Road but this mornings drive south towards Roxby Downs answered at least part of my question. The road was lined with capped bores (spear point wells down to the artesian water table) with periodic larger structures including filling stations for water tankers.

We got going early this morning wanting to be at the Leigh Creek gas station at 8:00 (its opening time) to get the flat tire fixed. However Leigh Creek does not fix tires, I was directed 5 km up the road to Copley where the task was completed promptly. More evidence for me that Copley will eventually win out as the tourist stop on this part of the trek.

This morning we retraced yesterday afternoons route to the Bolla Bollana Smelter ruins and there after a series of 4wd tracks south through part of the Gammon Ranges Nation Park. Again this was a nostalga exercise reliving past adventures. It was also the first time on this journey where there was any substantial need for 4wd low range as there were some steep rock climbs and descents. The descent to the abondoned Idninha out station building was probably the most demanding.