THE last time I mentioned my accommodations I was staying in a salubrious suite at Craig's Royal Hotel in Ballarat.
A sweeping staircase climbed from the hotel's lobby to the suites on the second and third floors, enormous vases stuffed with bright blooms sat on every table in the hallways, I slept in a canopy bed, and enjoyed a long soak in an enormous bath before sliding between fine cotton sheets and drifting away to Snoozeland.
For the past two nights I have been sleeping in what I can only describe as accommodations that fall somewhere up the other end of the comfort scale.
No, not a Budget Motel by a country back road, something clean and comfortable, just considerably more simple than Craig's.
I've been sleeping in a donga - the portable cabins that typically house the folks working at remote mines - in the side yard at the rustic Marree Hotel.
My donga had two single beds complete with doonas dressed in smart covers, a shower with lots of hot water, and a window that looked east to the sun rising over the dilapidated railway buildings at the old Ghan station.
Marree is 390km from Port Augusta, and just 90km from the southern edge of Lake Eyre, and today it's dust-blown hamlet that's home to just a couple of dozen people.
But between the 1880s and the 1970s, when the original Ghan ran through the settlement, this place was a thriving hive of activity with the scorched streets crowded by railway workers and their kin.
When the last train rolled down the track from Oodnadatta in 1980 the families moved away, the stately buildings began to fall apart, and now the town basically exists to support the tourists who pass through on the way to Lake Eyre.
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