About 5km north of Lyndhurst, a turnoff leads to a small carpark on top of a low west-facing erosional escarpment -- and the scene of one of the world's oldest mining operations. The escarpment contains huge quantities of multicoloured ochres, an important trade item in Aboriginal Australia. Pieces of Lyndhurst ochre have been found in burials and artistic sites up to 20,000 years old all over the continent; and occasional mining of ochres for ritual uses still occurs today.
A low afternoon sun will produce an ever-changing play of light and colour upon the Cliffs and adjacent landscape. This photo shows only a small part of this colourful display. The entire Cliffs location is an important Aboriginal site and visitors should stay OFF the escarpment itself.
Totality at Ochre Cliffs will last for a little over 26 seconds.
Centreline crosses the road through a shallow depression 9.1 km north of Lyndhurst, at coordinates 30 12.6' S 138 20.4' E. This is about 900 metres south-southeast of a microwave relay tower on the western side of the road. If eclipse day is unusually cold then atmospheric refraction could shift centreline up to 150 metres north of this calculated position. The eclipse begins here at about 18:43:10 with about 26.5 seconds of totality between 19:41:14 and 19:41:40. Atmospheric refraction due to the eclipse's low altitude could change the times of totality slightly. The moon's shadow will pass across this road at about 47,000 km per hour (ground speed), leaving little time to witness its approach. Just after totality, however, the moon's shadow (about 30km in diameter here) should be visible overhead as a vast band of darkness in the air. This darkness will recede rapidly to the northeast.
Although the terrain is barren, and apparently flat and featureless, there are several Aboriginal sites in the vicinity. Eclipse observers will need to stay close to the road if they are outside of the designated public viewing area near here. A low embankment to the east of the road is all that remains of the original Port Augusta to Alice Springs railway -- the "old Ghan" -- which was torn up about 20 years ago.
This ~200 degree wide late afternoon panorama was taken from the remains of the "Old Ghan" looking westwards on centreline. The car is west-southwest of the camera, where totality will be on December 4. The nearby microwave relay tower is visible to the right (north-northwest). As this panorama suggests the ground here is clear and hard-baked by drought, and there are no viewing obstructions at all. The highest part of the horizon is Termination Hill, which protrudes only 0.6 degrees high to the northwest. The summit of Termination Hill is the highest point within the entire ~900km long path of totality through Australia.
Download a high resolution version of this panorama (1.1MB zip).
The road continues through more flat barren terrain for about 10km until it approaches the banks of Leigh Creek (the watercourse, not the town), where a few trees and shrubs grow. The road turns to cross a cattlegrid at this point, and eventually reaches North Limit 24.8km (road distance) from Lyndhurst. If eclipse day is unusually cold (eg: 10 C instead of 30 C) then atmospheric refraction could move the North Limit 0.9 km (road distance) further from Lyndhurst.
Fortunately for navigation, North Limit crosses the road where the road itself crosses the former railway line, beside the ruins of Farina. This railway town was established in the late 19th century, by farmers who optimistically hoped to turn the vast flat lands here into fields of grain. For a few years the rains were unusually good, and the farms and town flourished, reaching a population of about 400. Then the normal climate returned...bringing years of drought and dust storms and forcing the abandonment of the town.
One of the more unusual cargoes embarked at Farina railway station was South Australia's biggest meteorite. The 1.2 ton Murnpeowie iron was dragged out of the desert northeast of here about a century ago; and can be seen today at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.
This late afternoon panorama looks southwest from where the former railway line crosses the road. Some ruins can be seen on the right side of this panorama.
Download a high resolution version of this panorama (382kB zip).
Today's Farina is a pastoral homestead less than 1km outside of North Limit.
Marree, another ex-railway town and telegraph station, is about 55km drive north of here at the junction of the Oodnadatta and Birdsville Tracks. About 30km west of Marree, the Borefield Road to Roxby Downs branches off the Oodnadatta Track. The 115km long Borefield Road is passable with care to all vehicles (unless it rains); although loose gravel and sand on the crests and bends demand cautious driving. A little further along the Oodnadatta Track there are lookouts by the southern shores of Lake Eyre, normally a dry sheet of concrete-hard salt 12 metres below sea level. This is the lowest and driest place in Australia (despite having a catchment area of about two million square kilometres!) and no rain may fall here for several years at a time. When significant rain does fall in its catchment, the filling of the Lake can produce a 9000+ square kilometres expanse of salty water, which attracts millions of waterbirds.
A line of irregular low hills begins near Marree, and extends for several hundred kilometres west then northwest of the town. These hills mark a geological fault along the southwest margin of the Great Artesian Basin. This immense subterranean accumulation of saline water is under great pressure, and the fault opens vents to the surface. The water is often very hot when it emerges, and laden with dissolved salt and minerals. As it evaporates these minerals are deposited around the vents, and after millions of years the result is a hill of precipitated minerals, up to 60 metres high, with a hot briny spring in its summit. These mound springs provided a vital water source for animals and plants, and for Aboriginal travellers; and more recently for the horses, camels and steam engines of the old railway and telegraph. To the southwest of the mound springs are outcrops of rock associated with the northwestern arm of the Flinders. It may have been the uplift of these ancient rocks that cracked open the Artesian Basin.
An alternate route to the main expanse of Lake Eyre begins at Marree, but is not recommended for ordinary cars. Marree itself gets a 98.5 percent partial eclipse on December 4.