Olympic Dam

Sunday 4^th May.

The nights are still quite cold, around 8 degrees when we wake up, with top temp today of 18 degrees. From our overnight stop we proceeded a further 140 km to the locality of Pimba where we turned off the Stuart Hwy and drove the 90 odd kilometres to Roxby Downs and the BHP / Billiton Olympic Dam mine site via Woomera Rocket Range.

Contrary to popular belief the Olympic Dam is NOT a dam but the name given to the world’s largest Uranium mine, the third largest Gold deposit and the fifth largest Copper deposit. They also mine silver.

Is it any wonder that the guard on the security gate would not allow us in the motorhome to go and see “The Olympic Dam”. The mine operation was named after a nearby livestock watering dam located on the Roxby Downs Pastoral lease. Olympic Dam has over 1,700 employees and over 1,850 Full time contract employees. Olympic Dam is the largest underground mine in Australia. Approx 270 kms of existing tunnelling underground, added at an annual rate of approx 24km or 65 metres per day.

This area was of particular interest to us as we had personally met and spent time in the past with Len Beadell who surveyed the site for the Woomera rocket range and surrounding areas. The town of Roxby Downs was built in 1988 to support the operation and has a population of 4,500.

After returning to the Stuart Hwy we travelled a further 35 kms to a beautiful rest area overlooking Lake Hart. This is a very popular overnight spot for travellers; we counted at least 20 others spread over a large flat area.

Grand total kms covered today around 370 including the 200 km diversion to Roxby Downs.