Off to See the Wizard - Port Augusta to Roxby Downs

Time to hit the road again and once we made this right hand turn it is all new county to us. 

Now we are really on an adventure.

The landscape changed to very flat and no trees with low flat topped hills in the distance.

This is for Jenny.  We crossed the railway line that runs from Port Augusta to Darwin and is used by the Ghan train.

The landscape changed again, now with scrubby, gnarly mallee and other low shrubby bushes.

We stopped at a rest area for morning tea and to the west was an immense salt lake. Looking at the map, we guessed it is called “Island Lagoon”, as it did appear to have several islands.

We have made a detour from the main highway heading north to have a look at the mining town of Roxby Downs.

It is rather remote, in the middle of the desert.

We’re here.  We had no idea what to expect.

When we checked in at the caravan park, as we hadn’t visited before, we were given a little treat pack.  What a nice touch.  The caravan park is mainly for mine workers and is very quiet at the moment with just a few tourists staying. I suppose it is off the main tourist trail.

The first thing we did was a load of washing, as they actually had free washing machines and best of all……it was sunny and warm.  What a lovely change from the cold winds we had experienced since leaving home. 

We went for a walk up to the main part of town. We were surprised at what a nice, tidy, well laid out town it is.  This is what we learnt:

Roxby Downs was created to support the Olympic Dam mine. It is 16kms from the mine site.  The first house was built in 1987 and the town officially opened in 1988. Since then it has grown to a thriving modern town of about 4,500 people.  There are government offices, a library, cinema, two schools, two churches, swimming pool and splash park, supermarket, medical centre, post office, bank, pub, service station and other small businesses.  Being a mining town, a large proportion of the population is transient, but there is a large number of young families.  You can imagine it would be a nice place to raise kids.  

There is also a really good visitors centre, complete with cafe and Sturt’s desert pea sculptures.  We watched a short video about Olympic Dam Mine, which is the reason for the town’s existence.

The mine is named after a livestock watering dam on the Roxby Downs pastoral lease under which the ore lies.  The dam was built during the 1956 Olympic Games. It is the largest underground mine in Australia with nearly 700kms of underground roads.  Olympic Dam is one of the world’s most significant deposits of copper, gold, silver and uranium.  It is the largest known single deposit of uranium in the world.  The deposits were discovered in 1975 and the mine opened in 1988. BHP took ownership of the mine in 2005. As well as mining the ore, all processing and smelting is carried out on site. It employs over 3,500 people, with over 300 on site at any one time.

Being in the desert, water is precious.  Water for the mine comes from the Great Artisian Basin just south for Lake Eyre and is pumped nearly 200kms to a desalination plant on the mining lease.  Water for the town is then pumped a further 10kms to a water treatment plant.

After watching the video we followed the Emu Walking Trail around town.  It was really interesting, taking you up residential streets, but mainly following cycle paths through wide areas of natural scrub between the streets.  

It was fun seeing plants we only learned about yesterday in their natural settings, especially in a little community garden.

After our walk we popped back into the visitors centre for a milkshake.  

When we started to walk back to the caravan park we noticed a long mural on the side of the community hall.  It showed so many aspects of the mine.  This is just a few sections of it.  It turns out it was only completed last month.

Around the corner of the building there was a tiled mural, created in 2013, celebrating 25 years of the town.

The weather was a bit too cold for the splash pool to be working.

There is a lovely green park up the centre of the Main Street, complete with Anzac memorial at the far end.  The trees were full of corellas, which were making a terrible din and mess of the smaller branches.

The majority of streets are wide, with nice tidy homes.  Lawns are non existent, but some have arid plant gardens. Quite a change from the collection of caravans and tents when things first started.  We wondered if they were company owned but we saw a couple of “For Sale” signs, so some at least are privately owned.

The Community Christian Church featured a copper cross, which was gleaming in the afternoon sun.  Rather appropriate for a copper mining town.

Another first for the trip was experienced today…..when we returned to our caravan there was a fly inside.  I’m sure it will be the first of very many.

We’re really pleased that we made the detour up to see this little town, as it was so much more than we expected.  Tomorrow we will backtrack to the main highway and continue travelling north.

Today’s highlights were the Roxby Downs Visitors Centre and not feeling cold for a change.