Destinations > Loop the Loop

The track tends to follow the dry creek beds but eventually greets you with a rise that provides distant views of the tree-lined Abminga Creek and the Abminga Station on the old Ghan line. Abminga would have been busy from the late 1920s when the first Ghan headed towards Alice and it was the starting point for Cecil Madigan in 1939 in his crossing of the North Simpson Desert. Now it's a ghost town. The rusty water tower and a coal hopper, looking like an alien insect from a movie set, are still standing. The old structures, houses and fettlers' rooms are slowly decaying from neglect but you can spend hours wandering around the site, piecing together the past from the remaining relics.

From Abminga, it's worth the detour to Eringa. Take the track south for around 20 kilometres, where you will suddenly find yourself on a ridge looking down on Eringa Waterhole, place of the Perenti dreaming, and a favorite campsite in the early 1860s for John McDouall Stuart on his trips to the north of the continent.

Sir Sidney Kidman acquired Eringa in the 1890s, the first property he had purchased on his own. Kidman must have had an emotional bond to the place because his favourite cattle brand X70 came from Eringa and he named his family homes in Kapunda and Adelaide after this place.

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Resume the Loop back at Abminga, and then head north through gibber plains and into the Northern Territory. Now this would have to be one of the few spots in the country where a State boundary is not marked by any sign or gate, but your GPS will let you know if you want to celebrate the border crossing. For those that are not GPS endowed, a set of cattle yards on the left is the signal to look right, and around 500 metres off the track up a gibber rise is a small concrete and brass marker that declares the boundary.

A few clicks on past the border is an intersection. The ruins of Charlotte Waters are reached 500 metres to the north. In its heyday, Charlotte Waters comprised a repeater station for the Overland Telegraph Line and a police station, housed in substantial stone buildings. The buildings were located on a small rise with extensive views over the gibber country to Mt Hearne and the Anderson Range. The buildings were not placed in this position for the benefit of the telegraph operators, but rather as a means of defense from possible attacks from the local aborigines. The walls of the building had loopholes or vertical slots that allowed a rifle to be fired from inside. Unfortunately, all that remains today of all this grandeur is a stone tank and part of a cellar, since the stones that made up the

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