We finish the Flinders Ranges and leave the Southern town of Hawker, heading up the Outback Way to Lyndhurst where we start the Oodnadatta Track which runs along side the old Ghan rail route.
This is the real Outback, a harsh country thats claimed many explorers over the years. We come accross many ruins of the old railway stations that were built along the Ghan railway route providing transport for materials and labour to inhabit these once unhinabitable areas of remote Australia.
The Central Australia Railway reached Marree in 1883 and the first train ran to the railway station in January 1884. The South Australia Post and Telegraph Department established a telegraph and post office in Maree in June of 1884.
Maree Post Office and Telegraph Station operated in a canvas tent, until a more permanent structure was built.
The town became a major railhead for the cattle industry. The railway was extended north from the town in stages, reaching Alice Springs in 1929. It was on the route of the passenger train which became known as The Ghan. In 1957, a standard gauge line was built south from Marree on a flatter alignment to facilitate the movement of coal from the Leigh Creek Coalfield to Port Augusta. That made Marree a break-of-gauge on The Ghan service because the remainder of the line was still narrow gauge. In 1980 the narrow gauge line from Marree to Alice Springs closed when the Adelaide to Alice Springs line was rebuilt much further west. In 1987 the standard gauge line to Marree was closed north of the coal mine in Leigh Creek and the town lost its railway connection completely.
Marree was also the home of Tom Kruse, one of the men who drove the mail trucks from Marree to Birdsville in Queensland, a distance of some 700 kilometres. This route crosses some of the most challenging sandy and stony desert country in Australia, and it was a remarkable feat for fully loaded trucks to make the run at all. A collection of hundreds of photographs, documents and memorabilia from Kruse's Birdsville mail run are on display at the Marree Hotel.
Oodnadatta is a small, remote outback town, the unsealed Oodnadatta Track, an outback road popular with tourists, runs through the town.
Town facilities include a hotel, caravan park, post office, general stores, police station, hospital, fuel and minor mechanical repairs. The old railway station now serves as a museum. From the 1880s to the 1930s, Oodnadatta was a base for camel drivers and their animals, which provided cartage when the railway was under construction and along outback tracks before roads were established.
After the railway line was lifted, Oodnadatta's role changed from that of a government service centre and supply depot for surrounding pastoral properties to a residential freehold town for Aboriginal families who, moving from cattle work, bought empty houses as their railway employee occupants left.
For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal tribes visited the place where Oodnadatta is located as a reliable source of water on their trade route; there was no settlement at Oodnadatta itself. John McDouall Stuart explored the region in 1859. His route was generally followed by the surveyors of the Overland Telegraph Line, completed in 1872. Alfred Giles referred to a place called the Yellow Waterhole, or Angle Pole, later known as Hookey's Waterhole and The Peake, near Oodnadatta. The course chosen for the Central Australian Railway likewise followed the route because a water supply was essential for steam locomotives. From 1891, Oodnadatta was an important station on the railway until the line closed in 1981, to be replaced in 2004 by the Adelaide-Darwin rail corridor about 160 km to the west.
Angle Pole is the point near Oodnadatta where the direction of the telegraph line changed to a more northerly direction. It is near the Peake cattle station, also known as "The Peake", or Freeling Springs. The ruins of Peake telegraph station exist on the station today.
By the 1880s the telegraph route was being used by camel trains, many led by "Afghan" cameleers (actually from many different places in the Indian subcontinent), or'Ghans, as they became known, who were brought to Australia for the task of hauling goods into Central Australia for pioneer settlers. Many of the cameleers settled in Oodnadatta and Marree, some with families and some marrying, mainly Aboriginal women.
When the railway was built, a town was established here, and in October 1890 was proclaimed a government township and renamed Oodnadatta.
Mt Dare Hotel no longer runs as a cattle station; the property was taken over by National Parks and Wildlife in 1984, when it then became the Witjira National Park. In 1989 the Department for Environment & Natural resources (as it is now known) no longer needed the Homestead area and set it up as a lease for tourism.