When the Road Has Other Plans

There’s a version of the full-time road life that looks like this: golden light, open horizons, a perfectly charged laptop, and a beautiful sunset at the end of a satisfying day. I’ve had plenty of those days. This isn’t a story about those days.

This is a story about Rapid Bay, and Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre, and a toe, and 20,000 pelicans I didn’t see, and a credit card sitting in a mailbox in Queensland while I waited for it in South Australia. It’s also, eventually, a story about Goog’s Track and a salt lake at dusk and a $99 cabin in Smoky Bay that felt like the Hilton. But we’ll get there.

Rapid Bay: Where It Started Going Sideways

I was camped at Rapid Bay on the Fleurieu Peninsula when the wheels started to fall off. Metaphorically. The Troopy itself was fine.

First, my laptop died. Just stopped. No drama, no warning, just gone. Two weeks of back-and-forth travel to the nearest country town, Victor Harbour, to see if it was repairable (it wasn’t) and then a trip to Adelaide to buy a new one. So 2 weeks of very interrupted work, and $2,000 later, I had a new one. That’s roughly four months of campsite fees, or a long time of free camping, depending on how you want to think about it.

Then one of my solar panels failed completely, and the other one decided it was tired and started fading out. For someone who lives off solar power, this is roughly equivalent to your house losing its roof. I was charging bugger all (technical term).

The Rapid Bay Campground itself is absolutely beautiful, but basic: toilets, no power, no showers. Which was fine, until my solar panels gave up and my batteries stopped charging.

Luckily, about 15 kilometres up the road was the small Second Valley CP that had cabins for around $90 a night. The crucial thing was that it had power. I could leave my tent set up at Rapid Bay (it takes the better part of three hours to pack up all my gear) and just book a night up the road to charge the batteries. Simple enough fix, as it turned out.

The timing of all this was particularly good, because I was doing an online course run out of America, which meant six hours of sessions between midnight and 6:00 a.m.

Try sitting in a cold tent at 3:00 a.m. doing coursework. Actually, don’t.

Instead, do what I did, which was pay for a cabin at Second Valley CP and do it in a warm cabin like a normal human being. The cabin had no internal toilet or shower. By my standards, it was “bloody luxury” to quote Monty Python (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE).

Here’s where I’ll admit something I’m still a little conflicted about: I bought a small petrol inverter generator as a backup. For someone who has been running entirely off solar and lithium for years, this felt like crossing a line. I know, I know. It’s a very small generator. It sits quietly in the back of the Troopy, looking apologetic. I haven’t fully made my peace with it.

The Pelicans of Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre (That I Didn’t See)

In the middle of all this, I read that Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre had 20,000 pelicans on it. Twenty thousand! I’ve been to Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre twice before. Once in 1989 and last year. Last time, in 2025, no pelicans – I was just too early. This time, according to everything I could read, the pelicans were there.

So I checked the government road closure website, found the roads open, and decided to drive the roughly 1,000 kilometres north to see them.

I want to be clear: I checked. I did the responsible thing. I looked at the correct official source. The roads were open when I left.

I got to William Creek Caravan Park, set up camp, and found out that the road to Halligan Bay Campground, where the pelicans were, had been badly damaged in the last big rain and was closed until further notice. 

This was considered a minor road and was located within national parks, so it wasn’t listed on the government website. 

Not “closed for two weeks.” Not “closed, but we’re working on it.” Closed until further notice, which is national park language for “we genuinely have no idea.”

One thousand kilometres. No pelicans.

I decided to stay at William Creek for about a week to see if things would change. They didn’t. But William Creek is a genuinely good spot, and I met some lovely people there, and sometimes that’s just what the road gives you instead of what you came for.

On the way up, though, I’d taken a different route than usual, through Woomera, and stopped to look at some of the space relics there. Things I’d never seen before. That was legitimately excellent. It didn’t make up for 1,000 kilometres and no pelicans, but it wasn’t nothing either.

The Toe Incident

While I was at William Creek, I smashed my big toe with the back of an axe while hammering in tent pegs.

I’m not going to dwell on the physics of how that happens, because I’d rather not think about it. What I will say is that it hurt considerably, and by the next day, it was looking bad enough that I rang the William Creek pub to ask what to do. 

They suggested I call the Royal Flying Doctor Service. So I did, and had a video consult with a nurse over Zoom, which involved me pulling my laptop camera off its mount and pointing it at my toe so she could see it properly. She was excellent. Professional, calm, practical. She approved me getting antibiotics from the RFDS first aid centre, which is kept at the pub.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service has been saving people in the Australian outback for nearly a hundred years. It’s a remarkable organisation, and I was glad to have them on the other end of a Zoom call at that particular moment.

Turning South: Coober Pedy, Salt Lakes, and the Coast

With the road to the pelicans still closed and my toe in bandages, I made the call to head south and do something I’d been thinking about for a while: drive Goog’s Track.

Goog’s Track is a 200-kilometre 4WD route running north from Ceduna, straight into the outback. It has 135 sand dunes, and people compare it to a mini Simpson Desert. I’d been planning to do it eventually. The circumstances brought it forward. 

The drive south was wonderful. Down through Coober Pedy, where I got my toe looked at again and collected a tetanus injection (the clinic there is used to dealing with people who’ve done things to themselves in the bush). Then, through Lake Everard on the remote Gawler Ranges Road, which I’d never driven before. I camped the night in some trees over a salt lake. The evening was perfect. Still, quiet, the light going flat across the salt. Worth every bit of the shortcut.

By the time I got to the coast, I was exhausted, and I pulled into Smoky Bay Caravan Park and paid $99 for a cabin. In the current economic climate, that is an excellent price for a cabin, and I slept very well.

Baird Bay and the Credit Card

While I was waiting on the Eyre Peninsula, there was one more complication in the mix: my credit card had expired at the end of May, and it was sitting in a mailbox at my Queensland address. I’d arranged for someone to forward it down to Ceduna, but that takes time, and the post in regional Australia takes whatever time it likes.

So I was waiting. Which is fine. Waiting is something you learn on the road.

I drove down the coast, which is beautiful country, and ended up at Baird Bay. It’s a tiny spot, a gravel camping area with a toilet. Basic. Right on the inlet. For three nights, the wind absolutely hammered the place, 40 to 45 kilometres an hour, gusting. My tent made sounds I’d prefer not to hear again. I didn’t sleep much. The tent held, but it was clear it was lodging a formal complaint.

On the days it wasn’t raining and the wind dropped, Baird Bay was gorgeous. Pelicans everywhere on the inlet. I was given a freshly caught salmon by a local. Small beautiful things happen when you stay patient and stay in a place.

Eventually, the weather got too bad, and I drove back up to Smoky Bay, where I’ve been for the last five nights. The cabin has been a good place to work. The storms from inside a warm cabin are actually exciting and fantastic to experience. Wind and rain sound much better when there’s a roof and a wall between you and them.

The Credit Card Still Hasn’t Arrived

It is Thursday, the 4th of June. The credit card is still somewhere in the postal system between Queensland and Ceduna. I’ve spent more than I budgeted this month on caravan parks, mostly because I’ve had to. The solar situation, the course, the weather, the waiting. That’s how it goes sometimes.

What I Actually Think About All of This

I’m not going to pretend there’s a neat lesson here, because that would be a bit much. But I will say this: the things that went wrong on this trip either forced me somewhere better or introduced me to something I wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

The solar failure got me into a cabin for the midnight study sessions instead of a cold tent. The pelican disappointment kept me at William Creek long enough to meet good people and see Woomera on the way up. The toe landed me on a Zoom call with the wonderful RFDS nurse and gave me a reason to stop in Coober Pedy again, which is worth a visit on its own terms. The weather at Baird Bay gave me three nights of dramatic noise and then three days of incredible calm.

And the whole mess pushed Goog’s Track forward from “sometime in the future” to “next week,” which I’m very excited about.

I would never have gone near Ceduna this early if things had gone to plan. There are seals and fish and pelicans, and some of the most beautiful salt lake country I’ve seen. I got a salmon from a stranger. That’s the road giving you something you didn’t know to ask for.

Things will go wrong. Your solar will fail, your toe will find the axe, the pelicans will be on the wrong side of a closed road. The question is just what you do next.

Usually, with the right frame of mind, the next thing turns out pretty well.

Update:
One last thing: I checked the status of Halligan Bay Road while writing this, and it’s open! Which changes things yet again.
Goog’s Track runs south to north, from Ceduna up to the Transcontinental Railway, then east along to Glendambo. From Glendambo, it’s a relatively short hop, skip and a jump back up through Coober Pedy to Lake Eyre. It’s almost a full circle. Those 20,000 pelicans might not have seen the last of me after all.