Photographing the Oodnadatta Track

Marla South Australia to Maree South Australia
///untaxed.personal.risking (-27.30785581258874, 133.6252720745279)

About the Oodnadatta Track

The Oodnadatta track is one of the dozen or so classic 'outback' trips. It crosses from Marla (just south of Alice Springs), in the North, to Maree in the South. Maree is effectively at the junction of the Oodnadatta Track, Bridsville Track, and "The Outback Highway". It is also just near the start of the Strezlecki Track at Lyndhurst. At the northern end, Mount Dare Road takes you to Mount Dare, which is the start of the various Simpson Desert Crossings. It can be corrugated, but most two wheel drive cars could travel it provided the speed is kept down, and preferably the tyres let down by about 20%.

The track can of course be traveled from north-to-south and south-to-north. We did it from North to South.

Marla

Marla is on the Stuart Highway, which is the road from Adelaide to Alice Springs and eventually Darwin. The town is tiny, but the Ampol Service Station is very large, and contains the Caravan Park, a restaurant, pub, and a reasonable sized motel. It is one of the biggest stops between Port Augusta and Alice Springs.

The road from Marla to Oodnadatta is dirt, but it is wide and usually both dry and hard. It is just straight desert. The sort of scenery you see in Mad Max movies - flat, gibbous, plains. There are plenty of places to pull off the road and camp.

Only a few hundred metres into the track from Marla, and you come across one of the fairly famous / infamous track conditions signs. While this one clearly needs replacing, the tracks may very well be closed to certain types of traffic for days or even weeks due to conditions. One of the issues with travel in this region is that you certain can die from ignoring such information - but that said, provided you travel when the tracks are open, the roads are pretty good and there are lots of people tavelling them (for the outback). i.e. several cars per day.

The road from Marla to Oodnadatta is about 209km, but given the normal conditions, this will still take nearly 4 hours. The first 200km is across private land that contains cattle. We found this the most boring section. There are some campsites / stops along the way (just off the track), but we kept going. The Angle Pole is 7km prior to Oodnadatta. This was a strong pole where the overland telegraph line changed direction. This meant the pole did not have two wires pulling on the pole from 2 opposing directions, so the pole needed to be bigger. The overland telegraph line has gone, and this is not the original post - but it is a memorial to the 1872 line that connected Adelaide to London. In 1891, this was also where they stopped the Great Northern Railway.

Oodnadatta Township

Oodnadatta has fuel, phone service, an ATM, Post Office, pub, (very small) supermarket, accomodation and basic vehicle repairs. See Oodnadatta Township for more details. We stayed in the caravan park behind the Pink Roadhouse, and had an Oodnaburger in the Roadhouse. There is a Railway station museum here. You can borrow the keys to it from the Roadhouse.

Oodnadatta to William Creek

The next stretch is 207km to William Creek. Like the rest of the area, this is gibber plains. That basically means small stones / pebbles covering the ground. Most people think the area is sand, and while there is some, mostly these small stones stop the sand blowing away. There are also acacia trees - more like a shrub than a tree, these are slow growing and exceptionally strong little trees. We saw eagles with nests in these trees no more than 2m (about 6 feet) off the ground.

William Creek

William Creek, like Oodnadatta, has accomodation, an airstrip (Royal Flying Doctor service), small supermaket, (great) Pub, and fuel. This town is at the edge of the worlds largest missile test range - Woomera, so it also has a park with various artefacts in the park.

Viewpoints

The Oodnadatta track - at least from Oodnadatta south to Maree - is absolutely full of photographic opportunities. Whether you like camping shots, Australian Fauna, Australian Flora, deserts, sunsets, rivers, landscapes, salt lakes, macro, or historical photography, then you will find your daily fill on this trip.

How I photographed the Oodnadatta Track

What I took - what was in my kit

I took my LowePro Backpack loaded with Canon 5DSR body, Canon EF 24-70mm, Canon EF 70-200mm, Sigma 50mm, and DJI Mavic 2 drone. Even though we were in the southern hemisphere winter (May), the days were in the mid-20's celcius (70's Farenheit), and it was sunny the whole trip. I did not have a trouble with lack of light, but did have trouble with shadows. Everything here is in direct sunlight.
I shot the various photos hand held, as the day was bright, and I could keep the shutter speed high enough to avoid blurring due to movement. I shot at ISO 100 to reduce the noise as much as possible, f7.1 to get as much depth of field as possible, without introducing diffraction; and using aperture priority, I let the camera set the shutter speed to get the exposure correct. The focal length varied from about 35mm - 50 mm depending on where I walked. The exposures from about 1/100 on the shady side of the silos, to 1/640 on the sunny side.

Techniques

Expose to the right

Exposing to the right means slightly over-exposing an image on purpose. The reason for this is simply that the sensor in your camera is not 'balanced' in the sense of recording as much data in the darker areas as in the lighter areas. It records more data in the brighter areas. By over exposing in camera, and the darkening in post processing, more data can be recorded in the darker areas of the image.

Using low ISO

'ISO' used to refer to the light sensitivity of various films. ISO 50 film is very light insensitive, and requires comparatively long exposures. It does however (Fuji Velvia 50) have very little grain. Most film was 100-200 ISO. ISO 400 - 1000 films were 'fast' films used for low light or when high speed was necessary. They were generally more grainy (noisy) that ISO 100 films. In digital cameras, we can vary the ISO of the sensor by varying the gain used when reading the sensor. However, like film, the more gain we use, the more noise we introduce. My cameras go from ISO 100 - ISO 51,200. At the high end, they can almost photograph in the dark, but the image quality is low (noisy). At around ISO 100 - 300, there is very little noise, but more light is required.

Other things to look out for

If the Oodnadatta Track interests you, then the Simpson Desert, Birdsville Track, and Streslecki Track are also likely to be interesting. If you are near Maree, then about an hour or so south starts the Flinders Ranges - and this is another brilliant photographic opportunity.

Location

Between Marlo South Australia (-27.304, 133.620), and Maree South Australia (-29.651, 138.0716).