Camping in abandoned fettler’s cottages has its issues: dingoes howling from near the front verandah being one.

Wangianna fettlers cottage

Seeing graffiti from Gunzel, a blogger on a Rail Page Australia forum, was also a surprise. The cottage is absolutely covered inside with ‘I was here’ graffiti dating back to the 1980’s, mostly from tourists travelling the Oodnadatta track. Some of the larger graffiti comes from either artists on their way to the 2003 Earth art happening and another lot from anti-uranium protesters in the 1990’s.

The Wangianna fettler’s cottage on the abandoned Ghan railway is remarkably well preserved seeing that other similar cottages are basically piles of rubble now 30 years after the rail ceased to run.

A restock at the Maree store and a photo of my bike beside Kruze’s old Birdsville Track Blitz mail truck and on. Nothing much for the run down to Lyndhurst, good dirt road and about 20 km of bitumen (amazing how quickly you get spoiled by bitumen and feel the pain of going back on the dirt!).