Jeremy and Leana Conquer the Outback!

So I left off at Dalhousie Springs.  We felt decidedly refreshed after our time there, but knew the next part of the drive would not be the most pleasant!  The first three hours were pretty much bumping along a rock track with lots of corrugations.  Our poor, poor car and our poor selves were jittered and jostled around like there was no tomorrow!  It was such a relief when we hit just regular dirt track again!  We made a few stops to fill up our gas tank.  One such place was Finke.  Here, once again, I call on my good friend Wikipedia to fill in my knowledge gaps:

Aputula is a remote Indigenous Australian community in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is south of Alice Springs, 159 km (99 mi) east of the Stuart Highway, near the South Australia and Northern Territory border. The Finke River (dry for most of the year, except during occasional floods)passes within a few kilometres of the community, on its way to Lake Eyre in the north of South Australia.  The community, which was called Finke until the 1980s, began as a railway siding on the Central Australian Railway. Lower Southern Arrernte and Luritja people quickly established a camp in the sandhills nearby, trading dingo scalps, artefacts and other items for European goods. A police station was built in the late 1930s, but the big boost to local settlement took place after World War II when local pastoralists convinced the government to move its cattle yards from Rumbalara to Finke because the water quality at Finke was much better. In the 1950s and 60s Finke became the centre of a vibrant regional community with regular horse races, a school and a pub. Life revolved around the arrival and departure of the train which became a source of cash income for Indigenous locals who sold artefacts and wild flowers to the passengers. Most of the Europeans left Finke when the railway line was shifted westwards in the late 1970s following the huge track damaging floods of 1973 and 1974.  The indigenous population did not move. Instead, with the help of Margaret Bain, a Uniting Church missionary, they moved off the sand dunes into houses they built themselves. It was during this time that the town came to be known as Aputula.^[1] The name comes from a place called 'Putula' near the community, which used to be the site of a water soakage. Putula is an Arrernte word. Arrernte people used to get their water there, before the white people and the railway line came to the area.  Aputula holds the record of having the hottest day ever recorded in the Northern Territory—48.3 °C (118.9 °F) on 1 and 2 January 1960.^[2]  The population of the town is 250 people. They are Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Luritja, and Lower Southern Arrernte people.
Several of the old buildings in Aputula, including the old police station, school and railway buildings have been nominated for heritage listing by the Northern Territory heritage Council.

I feel like I learned something by reading that!  I felt a bit uneasy in Finke (or Apatula).  I'm not sure what it was, perhaps this giant sign as you entered the community:

It was a bit intimidating, but everything was fine.  We got our 'petrol' and carried on.  The day before, we had stopped for lunch and petrol at Oodnadatta.  We thought we would get some burgers, since we had been subsisting on camp food of granola bars, apples, jerky, ramen noodles, etc.  Unfortunately, the burgers took an hour!!  Jeremy said he felt 'demoralized' in Oodnadatta, but couldn't quite place his finger on why.  Could have been that the people (including other travellers) weren't exactly friendly, or that there was a strange aura of desperation in the air.

The Pink Roadhouse is the main feature of Oodnadatta and we were able to pick up some good maps of the track which had been made up by the owners.  Tragically, the husband was killed in a car accident not too long ago and the roadhouse is now for sale, which may have contributed to the overall feeling of the place.

These are the sort of signs we were relying on throughout our trip.  The top sign appeared in Marree as we were beginning our journey.  It was basically advising you to have be prepared for emergencies - ie. have extra food, water, spare tires (tyres) etc.  The bottom sign is indicating what sections of the track are completely open (in green) and what section is still 4WD only (yellow).

That's enough of that for the moment!  In other news, I've been having a good week at work.  For one of my therapy sessions today, I went for coffee with a patient.  The idea was to have her talking fluently in a busy, loud, unfamiliar environment.  She did wonderfully!  It really wasn't like working at all...how lucky am I??  Jeremy is back from Kadina for good and has started his geri-rehab rotation at the Hampstead Hospital, a large public rehabilitation hospital.  It's nice to have him back and to know that he's staying in Adelaide for the rest of the year!  It wasn't too bad though and I think we would be able to do it longterm-ish if the need arises.