The turning point came for Mitsubishi with 4WD Pajero and workhorse Triton models around 1983, vehicles that struck an immediate connection with Australian buyers. This week we joined Mitsubishi Motors Australia Limited in a celebration of three decades in Australia with an expedition to the shores of Lake Eyre in their three hard-core 2012 model four wheel drives, Pajero, Triton and Challenger loaded to the hilt with tents and camping gear, food, water, tarps, bbq, refrigerators, generators, medical gear, repair kits and recovery gear.

We cheated a bit by flying from Adelaide into Balcanoona in the Flinders Ranges, just an hour away from Lyndhurst and the start of the legendary Strzelecki Track which snakes north to Wilcannia in Queensland. The night before we arrived the heavens opened - and closed the famous track - and the door on our plans to drive the bottom 80 kilometres in to Lyndhurst and on to Leigh Creek for the night. It helps to have plan B in the outback and we took alternative rough-and-ready tracks through the Flinders Ranges to Leigh Creek. Being a four-day expedition we were able get a full days driving in each vehicle, in our case starting with Pajero, Triton and finally Challenger.

Leigh Creek is a coal town, but is now situated 13 kilometres south of the old town that gave way to coal deposits in 1982. It is clean, with bitumen roads, modern mining homes, shops, a pub and out of place with the surrounding history embedded in the Flinders Ranges where deserted homes litter the landscape telling of a past filled with hopes for agriculture based on one good season in the late 1870s. Solid stone homes were built to last and they now stand roofless, doorless and windowless - yet not without a soul - as reminders of how cruel an environment is the Australian outback.

 

Marree is a town at the cross-roads.Two of the great Australian tracks converge here: You can head north along the Birdsville Track or west along the Oodnadatta Track. We stop here for lunch at the Marree Hotel, established in 1883, that overlooks the derelict Marree Railway Station, a key stop on the old Ghan line.

After lunch we head for William Creek, a blip on the radar with 10 residents and a dog called Pig. We more than double the population. Along the way we pass Robin Cooke's Mutonia Sculpture Park, the same sort of stuff you see on some of Melbourne's freeways, only a lot better, about 40 km west of Marree.

Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The tailfins of two Beechcraft aircraft embedded in the sand, a bus with a tailfin and rockets, an androidal man holding an androidal baby with a background of a windmill turned into a sunflower, and the coup de grace, an elevated water tank turned into a giant dog. We love it. It is eccentric. As my co-driver commented,' Someone out here has too much time on their hands.' Agreed. But it broke up the monotony of the stretch of the Oodnadatta Track between Marree and William Creek.

 

 

 

 

 

William Creek was a thriving little town on the Old Ghan route until around 1929 when the train added a dining carriage. Until then when the train stopped to pick up coal for fuel, passengers would rush the hotel and business was brisk. Along with a cold beer the Jehovah's Witness publican would serve 'Awake' and other religious propaganda, that should have perhaps been spelled propaghanda.

Opposite the pub is a memorial park with the remains of a British Black Arrow rocket, Britain's only successful independent space launch that was found in the surrounding Anna Creek Station, a 24,000 square kilometre Kidman property. Other rockets are on display: relics of the nearby Woomera Rocket Range, now a prohibited area thanks to atomic weapons testing.

William Creek has its peak season in the winter months with the grey nomads coming into town and booking a flight over Lake Eyre to the north. There are several planes and pilots living in the town - young people building up their flying hours - who max out their allowable time during the colder months. The grey nomads and 4WD mob also drive out to Lake Eyre north for an overnight camp at Halligan Bay, a distance of around 90 kilometres.

Despite the threat of rain we head out to Halligan Bay along a goat track that leads us to the shores of Lake Eyre North before entering the camping ground. A memorial back in the park is a stark reminder of the unforgiving outback. An Austrian tourist died in 1998 after bogging a 4WD in the lake edge and tried to walk back to William Creek along the goat track.

Overnight the weather worsens and at times it feels like my tent will blow away. I am belted around the ears by various parts of the tent flapping uncontrollably about 3.00 am as I curl up in a foetal position trying to avoid a belting. Our best estimate the following morning is that the wind gusts reached at least 90 km/h. Free plug here for the Cooper Tourer Tents which withstood the gale force winds and not one tore away.

The following morning the winds eased off and as we drove back along the goat track the sky turned an ugly dark blue and we hit the throttle to get back to the safety of the Oodnadatta Track. It is amazing how just a sprinkle of rain can turn hard-top gravel into a quagmire in a matter of minutes.

Back on the dusty Oodnadatta Track we head to the town that carries the name. On the way we stop at the Algebuckina Bridge which spans Neales River and allowed the Ghan to reach Oodnadatta. Opened in 1892 at a cost of 60 thousand pounds and consists of 19 spans each of 30.9 metres and remains South Australia's longest bridge. It is listed on State and Federal Government heritage registers.

 

Oodnadatta is a town you would reckon of tough blokes and tougher women, a fuel-stop that prides itself on being Australia's `hottest driest' town. So it was with some surprise that we pulled up at the Oodnadatta Pink Roadhouse, a building that would perhaps look more at home in Sydney's Oxford Street. Refuelled - both cars and drivers - we head off to the Painted Desert on our way to Coober Pedy.

 

With almost 1000 kms under our belts on hot, harsh,dusty, and at times high-speed, gravel roads dotted with crests and hard-to-spot dips, sharp rocks, gibber plains, slippery corners, on-coming 4WDs our convoy of eight Mitsubishis had so far excelled themselves. No mechanical issues, no dust inside the cabin and no punctures. It became a mission to reach Coober Pedy with a faultless record.

The drive to the Painted Desert proved to be an enjoyable one, tracking along creek beds, high-speed gibber tracks until we found the unusual desert, that looks like giant hills of ice cream draped in light-brown chocolate. It has come about with the erosion on the residue on an ancient inland sea and the leaching of minerals in the soil. We push on into Mad Max territory, the gibber desert where the famous Mel Gibson movies were shot. It is a stark, yet beautiful part of Australia where it is so flat you can see the curve of the horizon.

We cruise into Coober Pedy having kept our record of no mechanical problems or punctures in a total for all vehicles of around 10,000 km across the harsh terrain. After the tumultuous night in the tent at Lake Eyre we find an eerie yet welcome silence in the underground motel at Coober Pedy.

 

 

 

 

 

Our journey mirrored that of Mitsubishi itself in its 30 years in Australia. Long and at times rough with the storm at Lake Eyre a parallel to the closure of Mitsubishi's manufacturing plant at Tonsley Park. Yet, like the morning when we crawled from our tents, bedraggled, tired and a little beaten about the head, we focused on the job ahead and got it done. Mitsubishi has done the same since the end of Mitsubishi 380 local production in early 2008 to become an even more significant importing company with vehicles suited to Australian conditions - even those in the harsh South Australian outback.