WA trip 2015 – East on the Eyre Highway

Welcome to the final section of this year’s trip, across the Nullarbor on the Eyre Highway.

Some would say that the Eyre Highway is one of the most boring trips you can take in Australia (there are others which are worse), and whilst it is very long being more than 2000km, there are enough daily events to make it interesting.

We don’t stop in roadhouses, either overnight or for supplies, we ensure we have enough to get to the other end (quarantine restrictions not withstanding) and we’ve done it enough times that we are fairly familiar with its environment.

Our first trip across the Nullarbor was in 1975, in our old Land Rover we drove from England in, and at the time we though the Eyre Highway was so simple compared with the challenges of international travel in the middle east and Asia.

It was straight, clean, smooth (mostly, the exception being the Old Eyre Highway section is SA which back then was still limestone gravel) and pretty much free of traffic and people. Luxury travelling. Even today, most of those conditions still exist, with the additional safety net of occasional mobile coverage, more visitor information and frequent scenic stopping places.

We’ve done it quite a few time since 1975 but most of our recent annual trips have been on outback tracks which bypass this great strip of bitumen.

Read on for this years experiences.

21 Sept

On the road from Norseman east towards Balladonia.

An early encounter of a large kind:

A rather large load we had to get off the road for

 Just off the highway on an unmarked track we discovered Newman Rocks, a huge low hill of solid granite with a rather nice rock pool on its summit. We camped near here:

Or alternatively…

22 Sept

And so children, what have we learned from this morning’s experimental breakfast?

     You can successfully refry frozen cooked sausages.
     It’s very difficult to separate slices of frozen bacon.
     You can’t make potato cakes with Deb.
     Smoke alarms and burnt toast don’t mix.
     Creating baked beans by combining tomato sauce with left over salad beans does not work.
     Complex breakfasts create stress and loads of dirty dishes and the cooktop needs cleaning.

Back to Vita-Brits tomorrow.

Today we did around 250km from Newman Rocks to Caiguna and there was a bend in the road. But only one and here is it, at Balladonia:

50km straight before the bend and 146km after, the longest straight piece of road in Australia and one of the longest in the world. The truck in the distance is merging into the mirage on Australia’s longest section of road, 146km dead straight.

Proof that we had been there. Everyone stops for a photo here.

At Caiguna there is a rather large blowhole. Completely unguarded and big enough to fall into:

The wind rushes up the blowhole from the coast 30km away at 72kph, but not today or my hat would have been airborne.

Near the blowhole there were 2 men in a small camper. That was different enough, but these 2 were dressed in fly net hats and playing music on a guitar and banjo. How strange is that?

At the end of the longest straight was Caiguna, notable for its Telstra network. As a result I had a number of queries and problems to resolve with the Oka website, most of which I was able to sort out on the side of the road.

We camped about 20km past Caiguna in the Jilbunya rest area about 1km off the highway in a beautiful bushland setting with flowering shrubs everywhere.

23 Sept

On the way out of the campsite this morning we had a close encounter of the slithery kind:

Nothing much else happened until we stopped for lunch when a distinctively coloured Oka pulled up in front of us. It was Frank in Oka 410 who he says spoke to me for advice before buying an Oka. He painted it in those striking colours and seems to be happy with his purchase, and its cracked windscreen.

We had a chat for 1/2 hour or so with Frank and his mate Richard driving a ute of some kind. They were heading east but turning inland at Madura while we are also heading east but turning up the old Eyre Highway at Eucla.

Later we passed through Madura Pass, which is where the coast used to be before the sea receded 40km many thousands of years ago, leaving only the cliffs behind.

After passing down the pass we spotted an unmarked track leading to the Madura Cave, so on a spur of the moment decision we turned down it to investigate.

On the way we had an “Attenborough” of wildlife experiences. Several kangaroos bounced madly across the track in front of us, a bustard walked hoitily across the track in front of us, but this large stumpy tail lizard failed to crawl across the track in front of us at all and nearly met a sticky ending.   The grumpy tailed lizard just lay there growled at us until she was ready to move on.

Janet even tried negotiating with one of them:

The cave (actually part of a sink hole) was quite interesting, if you call the skeleton of a long dead kangaroo interesting, but more so was the track which continued another 40km towards the Nuytsland Nature Reserve and the south coast.

So on the spur of the moment (a completely different one) we went down that track which got progressively thinner, sandier and more difficult. It took us a couple of hours in 4WD to do the 50km (my navigator had adjusted her glasses) until we reached the dense bushland covering the sand dunes which border the sea.

We got tantalisingly close to reaching the elusive coast, we tried but ultimately failed, so after a 17 point turn on a narrow track we backtracked to camp in a clearing in the forest like Little Miss Red Riding Hood and will try another track tomorrow.

The rangers do keep what few tracks there are in good nick, using one of these towed behind a tractor:

Sadly, also like Little Miss Riding Hood, there is no phone service in this clearing in the forest either. But I did contact the Adelaide Base on our HF Radio and give them our whereabouts, even though the spelling of “Nuytsland” caused some difficulties. Apparently its going to be in the low to mid 20’s for the next 5 days where we are, with sunny days and no rain. Just what we need, I hate mud.

24 Sept

The drive back from the Nuytsland Nature Reserve was easier than going down, probably because we knew what to expect and could plan ahead.

From Madura to Eucla, the road across the former beach is long and straight, with the cliffs always present for 100km.

At Mundrabilla we filled up with water from the thoughtfully placed tanks alongside the highway in a raging wind strom. We had to position the bucket some way upwind from the receiving container so water actually went in it.

At the Border Village we veered off left onto the old Eyre Highway first travelled by us in 1975 and again in 2013 with Bill and Judy.

We camped around 20km up the track on a small side track which probably leads to some delightful caves or sink holes.

Janet did some washing which was left out to dry all night.

25 Sept

However, with the overnight condensation, the washing was even wetter this morning than last night.

While dropping my tyre pressures for the unsealed road, I noticed that the vicious march flies, which would normally take a chunk out of someone’s leg if given the chance, preferred landing on the tyres of the Oka rather than my leg, which I found slightly insulting.

Today was a day of sinkholes, blowholes and Welcome Swallows.

The first event would have been the excellent sinkholes 3km off the track to the south but we stayed there 2 years ago with Bill and Judy (where we also hung washing out to dry in the moonlight) so we didn’t go there again.

The next event was the Burnabie Blowhole. Right by the side of the track, it has a powerful blow as our tea towel will attest.

10km further on we ventured north up The Olde Coach Road, an early inland track from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, predating even the Old Eyre Highway, which itself was only developed in the wartime expedients of the early 1940’s.

The Olde Coach Road heading inland across the Nullarbor

We were looking for Coompana Rockhole which we didn’t find, being below ground level as they tend to be.

The Olde Coach Road is a very desolate narrow track across a flat “grassy” plain and seems to comprise mostly dry, dusty sand. On the map it leads west across towards Eucla, Mundrabilla and/or Madura, depending on which track you follow. But don’t try that route after rain, you might still be there.

However, it is a perfect environment for wombats, (although we didn’t see any since they are nocturnal), but their presence is very obvious from all the low volcanoes of sand that they dig out of their burrows, and their scats scattered all around.

Who are you calling a wombat??

Along the same section of Olde Coach Road, is the nearest we have ever been to a man-made meteorite crater. When and why it was dug remains a complete mystery, or there are some very large wombats roaming around.

But being within a km or so of the Old Eyre Highway, it’s reasonable to assume it was something to do with the original road construction project.

Here it is on Google Earth at this location  -31.501764, 129.413430, about 80m long and 50m wide.

The Twin Caves/Rockhole on the map were elusive, and we failed to find them/it on this trip. Maybe the map has them wrongly located.

Koomooloobooka Caves we also visited with Bill and Judy and took quite a while to locate, but locate them we did in 2013, and it was worth the effort. As a reward, we had lunch there then but bypassed them this time.

We did discover a sinkhole at 31:28:20 S, 129:41:41 E after the correct track was found, which was not the one marked on the map. The actual start is 366m east of the marked track.

Next on the agenda was the Koonalda Homestead, home of the headquarters of the Nullarbor National Park housed in the old Koonalda homestead building.

There’s no one in residence there and the park signage is distinctly sparce. However a sign asking visitors to “Keep the doors closed to keep out the cats” must be considered a good start.

Removing my cynical hat for a moment, the Nullarbor National Park has a great deal to offer visitors when there are a few more signs and some literature on the sites to visit, and the tracks are a bit better maintained. Already there is a camping area near the homestead and a toilet block.

In the homestead, Janet waxed lyrical about the kitchen range which she knew about from her early (very early) childhood.

Nearby the homestead is an interesting graveyard of old vehicles and a petrol pump that we would have got fuel from in 1975 when we passed though this area in our old Land Rover, just after we arrived in Australia. 

1km up a small track through the rusty car park is a very powerful small blowhole, only about 30cm diameter, but when it’s blowing it’s more than enough to remove your hairpiece, if it’s not firmly attached.

The centrepiece of Koonalda is its cave which is a rocky 5km trip north from the homestead, but well worth the rough ride.

It looks quite intimidating at first glance, especially the danger sign forbidding entry to the cave to anyone without a permit. However, the nearby industrial strength stile over the stout boundary fence would seem to be contradictory.

However, the stile does make a handy step ladder for peering into the innards of the cave:

The cave is home to countless pairs of Welcome Swallows who are able to defy gravity in their quest for a safe nesting location, and they are so inquisitive that every time we stop, a flock of them do a fly past to check out our Oka as the location for a new housing estate.

They particularly liked the rear window overhang of our Oka and the spare wheel as the landing ground.

We camped just past Koonalda along the Old Eyre Highway behind some bushes.

Sept 26

This morning’s ride was marred somewhat, when we killed a big black snake.

We didn’t mean to, I thought it was a stick or a shadow across part of the track and it wasn’t until I was right up close that we realised is was a snake basking in the morning sun, but by then it was too close to do anything about it on a narrow 2 lane track.

Is it a stick or a tree root?

Here are it’s last moments:

Too late we realised it was a snake.

We stopped a bit later and checked that it hadn’t flicked up and got wrapped around something under the Oka but there was no sign of it.

I don’t like killing any animals (except maybe flies, mosquitoes and march flies) and it bothered me for some time. It’s bad enough seeing all the roadkill along the highways without contributing to the toll.

After completing the Old Eyre Highway past some wrecked cars and rusting water tanks, we emerged on the new one at Nullarbor Roadhouse.

We chose to complete this year’s journey on bitumen since the next section of the Old Eyre Highway does not have the same number of points of interest, and our tyres are not perfect.

The downside is the Nullarbor plain in all its visual glory:

We camped in a rest area well off the highway at Caroona Hut, just east of Nundroo.

Sept 27

Today we passed through Penong, which, apart from 100 windmills, has the first shop we had seen for over 1000km.

This truck passed us, leading to a completely new meaning of “Road Train”:

At Ceduna we stopped for the necessary but tedious quarantine check.

       “Did you come from Western Australia sir?” “Yes”.
       “Can I have a look in your fridge please?” “Yes”.
       “Any fruit and vegetables with you?” No, we ate them all last night”.
       “Do you have any other food cupboards?” “Yes, in here”.
       “Thank you sir, honey is OK travelling in your direction. Have a nice day”.

And we were through, as we knew we would be, we’ve done this many times before and learned to eat it, cook it (like a soup with left over veggies) or throw it out, before reaching the check point. Then there are no hassles. Some people get into endless and fruitless (pun intended) arguments over a few $$ worth of veggies (or fruities).

So next to the IGA to replenish our supplies. Not as cheap as in Adelaide, but who cares, we still have to eat. Just leaving the check out, who should we meet than Rick and Sue Whitworth, who we last saw at Ningaloo Reef a month ago, 2236km away by the Great Circle Route or 2238km by the Rhumb Line process.

They were heading back to Geelong and had parked next to us and we made plans to visit them next time we were in Melbourne.

After lunch on the seashore and a long but useful talk with Scott in Melbourne, we refuelled and set off for Port Augusta. This was the first fuel we’d put in since Norseman, more than 1300km ago (due to our side trips) and we still had 50 ltrs left (out of 250).

Ceduna is a really nice town and maybe one day we should spend a bit more than 1/2 hour there exploring.

Lunchspot view from the Oka cabin

The scenery gradually changed from bushland to pastoral sheep country to arable farming land with fences. We hadn’t seen fences alongside the roads for weeks, how suburban is that?

Still 900km to go to Adelaide but already we are getting into local mode after 9 weeks away.

Finding secluded camping spots is becoming more difficult with encroaching farm activities but we did find a small track near the little known location of Cungena, between Wirrulla and Pochera to place it firmly on the map, which offered us some seclusion and a nice bushland setting and that’s where we are tonight:

Nearby we found what we think are some orchids:

Sept 28

We thought today would be a fairly boring bitumen drive from our campsite to Lake Gilles, our normal stopping point in the eastern Eyre Peninsula about 25km east of Kimba. We often camp there for it’s great bush scenery. It’s a No Camping area, which makes it perfect for camping in since there’s never anyone else there!

However, when we reached Kimba in early afternoon we found some changes had taken place since our last visit. The town has become an RV Friendly Town and a money spider had been spending up big there.

Looking for our usual water supply point we came across a brand new free RV park with water, toilets and showers. We filled up and sought out the Visitor Centre for more good news. Along the way we found  a free Lions Club rest area for campers and caravans with good facilities (which is where we are camped now).

The Visitor Centre is having a big makeover and the nice young lady there gave us maps and told us of other innovations, like two sculptures on the hill top, the museum, manicured gardens around the recreation areas with a new bowling green and golf course.

The sculptures were of Edward John Eyre and his aboriginal guide, cleverly composed from rusting local relics and overlooking the town:

Even down to the prismatic compass Eyre is using:

Next to the RV rest area is a new Mining Village. Aha, so it’s mining $$ which is causing all the activity. But according to Bruce, a 92 year old former farmer in the area who came to visit us later in the afternoon, no mining had actually begun. It was/is going to be a new iron ore mine but the low iron ore price and difficulties with railways and funding a new deep water port has stymied development.

Nonetheless, Kimba is fast developing into an attractive place to visit, not just an overnight stop. It’s another of the very few towns which actively encourage visitors to stay and in return all they ask is that visitors patronise local businesses, which we did, food and fuel.

One of the streets in Kimba has all its trees and power poles fitted with “tree socks”, presumably knitted by ladies of the CWA.  Janet calls the colourful streetscape a new “street address“:

On a gate next to the IGA supermarket, I spotted this ingenious use of an old universal joint from a car as a gate hinge:

Since we dallied a bit in Kimba and it’s 450km from Adelaide, we’ll spread the remaining journey over 2 days and arrive home on Wednesday.

Tomorrow we’ll reach Port Augusta and camp at Mambray Creek.

29 Sept

And yes, we did reach Pt Augusta today after a few experiences.

We met Bruce again this morning on his rounds and he said he was “working” at the museum (at the age of 92), taking people around. So we said we’ll see you there on our way out of town.

He was and he did and we did. The Kimba museum is a treasure trove of old farming and “living in the country” memorabilia.

Relocated buildings, complex farming implements, engineering tools, old tractors, stationary engines, an old school room, a sewing machine room, an old camera display and an olde shoppe.

It’s described in the tourist brochure thusly:

Eight separate buildings: The historic pioneer house, the one teacher school, the blacksmith shop, the Government Shed are equipped. Sheds house the farm machinery, stationary engines and fire engine, while a separate museum centre contains a library, photographic and interpretive displays, taped histories and various documents relating to social history. All in bushland setting.

Kimba’s local history museum includes pioneer domestic and farming items, stationary engines, harness vehicles and equipment, vintage trucks and tractors, a water conservation model, schooling and communication equipment together with supporting documents, maps, tapes, photographs and ephemera.

All of it was very interesting but ultimately we became overwhelmed and overloaded with history but you can read more about the museum here. It is well worth a visit.

An old fireplace. I shall build a mantlepiece like this when we get home.

A grader that Bruce built himself from an old truck and collections of scrap iron and used it for several years. Note the steering wheel is miles away from the seat but he said you didn’t need to steer it much anyway.

After the museum overload we moved on to Lake Gilles, not to camp this time, just for a lunch spot.

Pigface in bloom next to the lake Emu footprints across the lake bed. Later on the highway we had to move over for some monster moves. Eventually after bypassing Pt Augusta and waiting for hours (it seemed) at some new bridge works, we arrived at Mambray Creek to camp. Our last camping place for this trip. Home tomorrow and the search for the keys to the lawnmower shed will begin. Everything back to normal. Epilogue This has been quite a good trip, maybe not as spectacular as others, probably due to the fact that we had done much of the route before, and we had a few unexpected technical problems before and during the trip. We’ve done 10,500km in 9 weeks and covered an area half the size of Europe. 1900 photos and a lot more memories than that, we’ve met some very nice people, a few other Okas and surmounted quite a few problems, not all our own either. A fairly typical trip. There were some highlights of course, like camping and snorkelling in the reef lagoon on Ningaloo Station (while you still can, it’s under threat from the WA Government), and visiting the northerly section of the huge Rudall River National Park neither of which we had done before. Plus the freedom and peacefulness of the outback wherever we are, and the warm coastal towns of Dampier/Karratha. To re-read out blogs use the following links or the “2015 Trek across WA” drop down menu at the top of each page: Home to Newman, Newman to Ningaloo, Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards, East across the Eyre Highway.

WA Trip 2015 – Ningaloo Northwards a bit, then Southwards

Welcome back to the third instalment of our WA 2015 Trip Blog


5 Sept 2015

Shrieks from Janet this morning, she found a long hair in her own Weet-Bix today. Oh, such blessed irony!

For the past few days we’ve been using our reserve drinking water tank which still had good old Adelaide water in it. The reason being that while at Yardie Caravan Park, we (I) accidentally filled up both main tanks with less than savoury bore water (it wasn’t a health risk, it just tasted like liquid paraffin and tainted the tea). So today we had to transfer water out of the drinking water tank to the shower/washing water tank today to make room from some fresh drinking water available at the Exmouth visitor centre.

Having been spotted by Rick and Sue yesterday at Oyster Stacks, today we spotted their Oka in the shopping centre car park in Exmouth.

That done and the laundrying, shopping and a visit to the bottle shop (for we don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to get 5 litre casks of wine), we set off south to go east and then north if you understand, Exmouth being at the top of a peninsular.

If I said the landscape south of Exmouth was totally boring, it would be a major understatement. 100’s km of scrubby, dry grassland over low sand dunes suitable only for sheep. No trees, no flowering shrubs like in the National Park, no features of any kind except the occasional termite mound. Here’s a drawing of the landscape:

————————^——————————^——————————

We found a small track into a clear area between 2 sand dunes which was a perfect campsite (see below), apart from the boringness of the view.

————————^————O-O————^——————————

6 Sept 2015

Today, being father’s day we had a special Father’s Day treat, a flat tyre, the first of this trip and only the 5th in 10 years and 170,000km of touring.

It was between Exmouth and Karratha on the North West Coastal Highway. We were quietly motoring along enjoying a Father’s Day drive when Janet said “Should the Oka be weaving back and forth like that?”

Well actually, no it should not. So we stopped to have a look and the left rear tyre was almost flat.

So my mechanic and I got out jacks and wheel braces and blowing up thingees and set to replacing the wheel on the side of the road with road trains whizzing past and blowing dust and stones all over us.

In little more than an hour, we replaced the wheel (they weigh over 80kg each), plugged the sidewall hole in the offending tyre (which had also lost a block of tread), blew it up again as a workable spare and put everything away (which was the biggest job).

Number of vehicles who passed by >100, number of vehicles who stopped to help

With a replaced wheel we travelled on circumspectly, if there is such a word, noting that both our spares now have plugged sidewalls and even 2 of the other 4 have nasty gashes in their sidewalls.

Due to our diminishing stocks of safe and useable tyres, if we can’t get any new ones in Karratha, we’ll have to retrace our steps carefully down to Perth where we would be able to get some and come home across the Nullarbor. If we kept going north and then east and then south, there would be bugga of a chance of getting any tyres the right size along the way and I doubt we could get home with the tyres we have.

Ironically I have 3 almost new tyres at home but considered that the 6 we took with us had plenty of life left in them for one more trip.

In the words of me, on my Oka blog: ”You wouldn’t leave home on a trip with tyres more than half worn, would you?“.


Well they weren’t half worn then, but they certainly are now. I shall have to amend my saying to: “You wouldn’t leave home on a trip with tyres more than 0.001% worn, would you?”.

Experience is a great teacher but why does it conduct its lessons when you’re 4000km from home? 

We crossed the Ashburton River at the Nanutara Roadhouse but needing nothing we didn’t stop. Last time we called in they didn’t have any diesel anyway and the manager was very rude about it. (“Well, could we have some water instead then?” “No”). Excellent customer relations.

We are camped tonight in the Cane River Conservation Park. There is a rest area marked on maps but in practice it does not exist. If it ever did, it’s now completely invisible and anyway a recently constructed causeway over the river precludes any chance of reaching it.


Not to be outdone, we located a small track which led about 1km off the highway to a beautiful area of red gravel and green spinifex clumps.

Tomorrow we should complete our journey to Karratha, which is the residential area for the Port of Dampier, where Rio Tinto export their iron ore from.

Hopefully we’ll meet up with fellow site administrator James who lives in Karratha.

7 Sept 2015

An auspicious day, my LXX birthday and now I’m officially a septicuglerion, or something similar. (I don’t have the confidence to face numerical realities yet while I can still speak fluent Roman. What have they ever done for us? Not simple mathematics, that’s for sure.)

Several Happy Birthday messages on my Facebook page and emails, many thanks to all, and the usual computer generated messages from websites I have visited.

And I had a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, mushrooms and fried tomatoes on toast surrounded by my birthday cards:

Fings wot I have Supa-Glued today:

A broken towel rail rail. I can’t believe it, it’s only 10 years old too:

A couple of minor points where the soles of Janet’s sandals had come adrift.

I can believe that, not so cheap but definitely nasty ladies sandals made to look at not for clambering over rocks, sand dunes, squashing bugs etc.:

We are now in Dampier in mid west WA, a major exporting port for Rio Tinto’s iron ore, but you wouldn’t guess it from the photos of the bay (from the bar in the pub):

Unlike Port Hedland which is covered in BHP’s red dust, Dampier is a very pretty area with all the nasty port-y type things kept very low key and out of sight.

We celebrated my birthday at the Dampier Mermaid Hotel, carefully chosen due to the fact that it’s the only one open on a Monday, but the food was good and they had an SA wine on the wine list (only one) plus a free shuttle bus to our campsite.

Sadly no mermaids were on show, although Alex the wine waitress was a good approximation.

We don’t look very happy in the photo but we’d had a long hot drive today and it was still very hot (mid 30’s) and we hadn’t had a drink yet:

Once the wine bottle could be upended without spillage, all seemed much better.

Here’s the Mermaid Hotel as it was in 1968. The views over Dampier Bay are still the same except they are now in colour:

Historical Note:

The Mermaid was the name of Lt Philip King’s ship when he first surveyed the Dampier area in 1818. He also named Mermaid Sound in the Dampier Archipelago.

8 Sept 2015


Today somewhat refreshed and with only a minor hangover we went to visit James, my fellow Oka website administrator at his home in Karratha.

We had a very congenial chat about life, the universe and Oka websites and a cup of tea.

In the course of discussions we talked about tyres. I’d previously asked James if he knew of any available in the Karratha area but we both really knew tyres of an Oka size were difficult to come by and we were resigned to spending a few days here while we arranged for some to be trucked up from Perth.

James then said he had a few old ones lying around his yard which were used as supports for boats, trailer covers etc and would we be interested if that would help? So yes, we said and had a look at what he had. There were a couple of brand new Toyo M608Z’s but a few years old and some part worn tyres, all still on original Oka wheels, which he had no further use for since he had moved on to 17 inch alloys and larger tyres imported from the US (partly due to the difficulty in sourcing 19.5 inch tyres).

After some discussions on price, we agreed the simplest course of action was to simply swap over wheels with tyres still on them. So we moved across the road to a piece of hard standing gravel and changed all 4 wheels. It was hot grinding work in the Karratha heat which is starting to wind up to summer.

New front tyres

In the end we took 3 of the 4 tyres available since the 4th one we found had a long Tek screw buried in the tread. After removing it, air came out so I plugged it up but its remaining tread wasn’t any better than one of mine, and replacing the wheel on the rear gate is a real drag, so we didn’t change that one over.

Now we were the proud owners of some new and part used tyres which should see us home. As luck would further have it I have a couple of similar part-worn tyres of the same type at home, part of a job lot I bought a couple of years ago.

Problems solved we thought, but fate was about to play another dastardly hand.

While outside James’ place, we had the air conditioning on full blast since it was hot and humid, when we heard a loud hissing sound from under the Oka, similar to that you get when a radiator boils over. This was followed by a gurgling noise and green liquid spewed on to the ground, which also looked like green radiator coolant.

However, it was nothing quite so simple. The green fluid was actually oily, of the kind used in air-conditioning systems. A high pressure hose from the compressor had ruptured.

Green fluid spewed out of the 2 black hoses

Bugga, another problem to solve.

9 Sept 2015

So this morning, after the aches and pains of changing 4 wheels had subsided, we took the Oka to an air conditioning place in Karratha, “Jolly Good Auto Electrics”, owned somewhat surprisingly by a Trevor Jolly. They had the Oka for most of the day with the news getting progressively worse as we wandered around and sat and waited in Karratha City, a nearby shopping centre which was mercifully cool.

At first the hose replacement was an easy fix, but then they found that the condenser cooling fan had failed which had allowed the system to overheat which caused the hose to fail in the first place. Then they found a leak in the condenser itself, which is why we needed the system regassed in Alice Springs 3 weeks ago.

So to make a long story almost as long, we had to have a new condenser, new cooling fan, sundry pipes replaced, the system leak tested again and regassed, the total cost being northwards of $1300.

New high pressure “Tee” piece after Trevor was scathing about Oka’s original brass joiner

Shiny new condenser, fan, filter and pipework

However, I (and Trevor) are now pretty confident that the air conditioning woes we’ve had over the past few years should be behind us. Trevor was surprised that the previous “experts” we had consulted hadn’t been able to spot these problems before and I should tell them of the real situation.

Sadly, air conditioning systems are one of the few areas of car maintenance that I’m not able to work on due to legal restrictions on the use of refrigerant gases, because the plumbing work is no different fundamentally to compressed air, bottled gas or water piping.

10 Sept 2015


Today at last we had a free day to see some of Dampier’s delights.

We start with our small, volunteer-run and therefore cheap but adequate caravan park, right on the bay:

Right across the road from the caravan park is Dampier Bay, a very quiet picturesque bay dotted with islands, yachts and other small craft:

Of course, being an iron ore exporting port, you’d expect some industry to be evident, but it is fairly discrete, up the other end of the bay:

Surt Desert Peas are almost weeds in these parts and grow everywhere, even on the edge of the shore:

This is Tidepole Island, a private island with a castle built by a recluse in the 1960’s:

There is quite a nice beach nearby:

With proof of at least one swimmer:

From the bay we went up to a lookout overlooking East Intercourse Island (yes, that’s its real name the origins of will be explained later), the site of another loading facility:

From there it’s only 20km to the North West Shelf gas processing plant, one of the biggest in the world and its statistics are staggering:

$42bn of investment, including 4 offshore extraction platforms, 135km of undersea 1m diameter high pressure gas pipelines, a huge gas processing plant (which is the only part of the project visible) and dock facilities despatching 1 LNG tanker every 1.5 days.

The view of the round domes of the underground LNG storage tanks from the visitors centre. These 4 tanks each hold 60,000 tonnes of liquified natural gas cooled to -161ºC while awaiting  delivery, a very large potential time bomb:

The Karratha gas plant can produce 52,000 tonnes of LNG a day.

This is an aerial view of the processing plant, which surprisingly does not interfere much with the natural beauty of the surrounding environment:

This is us at Whitnel Bay, right next to the gas processing plant and it’s nice enough to camp there:

But right behind us, fairly well hidden, is the processing plant:

 Even a white bellied sea eagle is at home in this environment:

Nearly every part of Dampier and the nearby Burrup Peninsular is built on huge piles of naturally occurring brown boulders.

And in Deep Gorge in Murujuga National Park on the Burrup Peninsular, literally every rock has ancient aboriginal artwork on them. Here is a selection (yes, close up with the sun on them, the rocks were this red!):

The artworks are fairly faded because they are believed to be between 25 and 30,000 years old, that’s 5 time as old as the pyramids. And there are estimated to be around 1,000,000 of these petroglyphs in the Burrup Peninsular and surrounding areas.

There are some nice waterholes along the gorge and it was pretty hot when we visited the gorges (mid 30’s), so it’s easy to see why ancient indigenous people would live in this area, water, shelter and plenty of sea food.

11 Sept 2015


Time to leave Dampier. Although we’ve had and are still having a trying time with a plethora of technical problems, it ws still sad to leave Dampier. Despite it’s industrial fundamentals, it is a very attractive and tranquil place to be.

Yes, it has huge iron ore loading facility and gas processing plant and all the infrastructure that goes with them but it is still on a beautiful bay, with very little industrial traffic, a small but adequate shopping centre and plenty of special things and places to visit. It was only occasionally noisy when an ore train arrived or a ship left port.

People who live in Dampier say they wold never live in Karratha, but when you need it, Karratha is a fairly large town of 20,000 people only 15km away, with all the shops, suppliers and facilities you could need.

For example, just before arriving in Dampier, I found a grey spot on my leg which I worried could have been a skin cancer. So passing by Karratha Medical Centre, I popped in and checked on the availability of doctor. I waited about 10 minutes and then saw a nice Indian doctor who checked me over and assured me that the spot was nothing to worry about, but a rough area on my face could be a worry if it didn’t heal up in a few months so “See your GP”.

It was surprisingly efficient (it took longer to fill in those stupid forms than the time I had to wait), and better still there was no cost, he must have liked me or maybe it was due to my recent birthday.


Historical Note:


Dampier was named after William Dampier, the English buccaneer who was given carte blanche to plunder Spanish ships wherever he found them and go forth and explore new lands on behalf of the Crown. All of this was 80 years before James Cook did much the same thing.


Dampier mapped the west coast of Australia as commissioned by the British government in 1699, but didn’t recognise Australia as a major new continent so he failed to plant a British flag here.


His exploits surrounding the abandonment of Alexander Selkirk on a desert island inspired Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe (claimed to be the first ever novel in English).


Note Ends.

After leaving Dampier (the town), we called in at Point Sampson just up the coast which is a very pretty small seaside resort and has some nice beaches.

Honeymoon Cove

The layered rock formations on the way down to Honeymoon Cove were quite contorted and lifted to the vertical position.

We went for a paddle in Honeymoon Cove but the sun was getting too hot and burning our legs so we retreated to the Oka.

We drove around to Cossack, a very early settlement nearby where a leprosarium was once established due to to its isolated location.

We had lunch on a headland overlooking Cossack and decided that if we had leprosy, Cossack would be a very nice place to have it in.

The town’s old buildings are being restored by local volunteers and provide a wealth of understanding abut life in the early days of colonisation in a very remote part of the fledgling colony. There’s an Ice Cream Shoppe there now but I bet there wasn’t when lepers came to visit.


While we were parked for lunch a flock of Zebra Finches came to check out the Oka as potential nesting sites…

From Cossack , we backtracked through the Shire town of Roebourne and it was very sad to see local aboriginals sitting under almost every lamp post waiting for something to happen. It never will until they recognise that they must do something themselves to improve their own lifestyle.

We are camped in the Peawah Rest Area off the NWCH and fixed one of the a/c fan units which failed yesterday with a stalled motor which dragged the voltage down and did all sorts of unspeakable things to the electrics.

When I say “fixed”, what I actually meant was that I removed the offending fan unit, cleaned out the grunged up evaporator fins and blanked off the opening so we are now operating on only one fan unit, which is surprisingly about the same as 2 of them were with blocked up fins.

12 Sept

The NW Coastal Highway from Roebourne to Port Hedland is pretty boring, away from the coast and across endless plains of grassy scrubland, punctuated by a number of sharp booby shaped hillocks in the Tabba Tabba Range.

Port Hedland is our least favourite western coastal town. It’s covered in fine red dust, it’s hot and therefore dusty and it’s huge, spread out over 50 or more km. They have built a vast new road system including American stye freeways with loop back interconnectors between them, but with huge empty spaces between them.

You could easily spend a fortnight’s vacation in Dampier, but even an overnight stay in Port Hedland would be too long.

South Hedland, about 20km south of the port, has quite a good shopping centre and they have tried to provide all the essential community services and facilities that residents could require, sports arenas, green spaces and the like, but it still seemed to us to be a fairly dismal, hot, flat, and dusty place to eke out a living. No wonder BHP has to pay its workers so much just to live there. Karratha and Dampier, 250km further west, seems to have a much better living environment with pretty much the same industries and industrial infrastructure. (However see later note regarding the new Roy Hill iron ore mine south of Nullagine, which is even worse).

Having enjoyed all that South Hedland could offer (shopping, gas refills and fuel), we headed up the boring coastal highway for 50km and turned south towards Marble Bar and Nullagine.

Frankly it was getting too hot and sticky in both Dampier and Port Hedland, and the reports we got was that it was even hotter up north across from Broome to Kunnunnurra, so heading south and across the Nullarbor seemed to be the best route back to Adelaide rather than across the top and down the Stuart Highway, and it would be a bit more scenic as well.

The Marble Bar road started just as boring as the coastal highway but with a plethora  of long road trains, until we reached the area where the Gorge Range of hills met the Coongan River, when it all became very attractive and we camped (where we had a few times before) in Doolena Gap, a huge gap in the Gorge Range caused by the Coongan River. Being late in the season there was only a small water hole and a few birds making the most of the dwindling resources. In other years, there has been a wealth of birdlife to watch.

13 Sept

Traveling though the Coongan Gorge the next morning revealed this broken down road train trailer.

Marble Bar is always a delight to visit, even though it is a very small town. There’s the jasper bar across the Coongan River, after which the town is named, a brand new but not yet completed War Memorial with an international war related signpost (Marble bar is closer to Singapore than it is to Melbourne or Sydney, the Iron Clad Hotel and a one stop fits all shop/fuel depot/post office. That plus some small council offices, a handful of houses and a few small mining ventures is about it.

The Iron Clad hotel on the left of the main (and only) street

The Post Office/Shop/Fuel Outlet

The War Memorial

Closer to Singapore than to Melbourne or Sydney

A beautiful chunk of jasper in the Memorial

A warm day in Australia’s hottest town

But it’s also in a very scenic part of the country, and it’s not always hot, it can be very hot however and has a history of extremes which give it its legendary status as Australia’s hottest town, but not at this time of year. Dry, sunny and mid 30’s, the perfect time for a wander around Chinaman’s Pool (the early Chinese veggie garden) which always has water in it. Further out is the Comet Gold Mine museum and the WW11 Corunna Downs secret airbase that we’ve visited a few times for a nostalgic reminder.

“The” Jasper Bar

The good bitumen road ends just after Marble Bar when the Rippon Hills road to the Woody Woody and Telfer Gold mines branches off and the rough track to Nullagine starts, so I dropped my tyre pressures to make the ride more comfortable.

Nullagaine is an even smaller town than Marble Bar but it still has a Telstra service so we could check our emails and catch up on the Canberra goings on. (“Rumours of a leadership challenge are just a media beat up” – Abbot. Yeah, right).

Nullagine, pretty much all of it

From Nullagine there is a very scenic track heading 150km east which leads to Eel Pool (great swimming) and Carrawine Gorge (good camping), but we’ve done that several times before and it’s still pretty warm so we continued south to Roy Hill.

That name has become synonymous with a new iron ore mine being built near there and the road/tracks south is a mish-mash of rough tracks and brand new freeway style roads, bridges and rail crossings.

Reaching the iron ore mine site is a revelation, with a huge workers village being established with streets and streetlights, landscaped and manicured verges and rows of temporary looking Dongas, all set in a dusty outback environment.

The mine site itself is a hive of activity even though no ore has yet been extracted. A new rail link to Port Hedland is being built for this purpose, criss-crossing the new road system.

A bit further on is a new airport (called Ginbata, possible an acronym from Gina Reinhart and other consortium members) and we were amazed by its huge car park with 20-30 brand new buses parked ready to collect/deposit FIFO workers.

But what really peed me off was that after 40km of superb bitumen highway, and just after I’d raised my tyre pressures again for the expected bitumen road conditions to continue, it all suddenly ended and we were back to a rough desert track for the next 100km towards Newman.

There was no way the new shiny buses could have driven into the mine site so they must all have been trucked in, along with all the other vehicles and equipment to construct the mine.

We camped just south of Roy Hill in an area just off the “highway”.

14 Sept

Today we continued to Newman, completing the circuit we started when we reached Newman from the Talawana Track 4 weeks ago, and lest you think Australia is a small place…

At least these are the wildlife on our Coat of Arms, the rest can obviously go to buggery.

A lot of large mining equipment was moving up the highway…

We refilled our water tanks at the visitor centre, and seeing the scones and jam that the people on the mine tour were enjoying made us hungry so we also stopped for a decadent Tea/Coffee/Scones/Jam and Cream interlude.

Headed south past the famous Capricorn Roadhouse and the pretty grotty Kumarina Roadhouse.


Mula Mulla’s near Kumarina…

Camped south of Kumarina just off the highway to do washing, always an exciting concept.

15 Sept

This morning, the washing having dried overnight and successfully harvested, I topped up the rear diff because the pinion seal is leaking, and greased the rear UJ. I would have done more but my grease cartridge expired and I didn’t have a spare (left home in too much a rush).

I also adjusted the front wheel alignment to toe-out more (or rather not toe-in so much) and the steering is quite a bit more stable now. So, on the basis that if some is good, then more must be better, in a day or two I’ll adjust the tracking a bit more, to achieve perfection in the steering department with our new front tyres.

Then on to Meekathara for a grease cartridge and water.

The public loos required a key from the shire offices but I can’t think why, maybe to keep people in, not out. They were not the best by far.


Then down the smooth and lonely gravel road towards Sandstone (only 1 car seen on it). Camped just off the deserted highway in the bush, so silent you can hear the curvature of the earth.

Camped just off a deserted highway in the bush,

so silent you can hear the curvature of the earth.

16 Sept

The track south to Sandstone had some interesting features:


The sides of the road were carpeted in pink flowers which looked like but weren’t pigface:

Barlangi Rock, which contrary to appearances was actually created by a huge meteor strike about a billion years ago, give or take a few. According to the interpretative plaque, the 10km wide meteor hit the earth causing the surface rock under ground zero to melt under the “incredible energy of the impact” and a mammoth crater to be formed.

The molten rock solidified and over eons of time, certainly more than a weekend, erosion of the surrounding landscape has left the hard core still standing. The surrounding area is covered in “shatter stones”, remnants of the original melted rock which as their name suggests shatter under the internal stresses still remaining within them.

Further along is a rather more recent development: an 1800km vermin proof fence one of the few which is still in use and properly maintained. Originally it was built to keep rabbits out but that was a dismal failure so now it’s only a dog fence to keep out dingoes. It’s wires are strung so tight you could play music on them.

Later we happened upon this large perentie ambling across the road. Normally they race off when alarmed but this one just crouched down and declined to move, so we had to blink first and move on. Had we been of a different culture, it would have made a superb meal.

When we reached the quiet, almost silent small town of Sandstone, something was different. A loudly dressed and voiced lady stood in the road and entreated us to taste her wares. She was Lady Di (no, not the original one) and her business was Lady Di’s Pies. She claimed they were the best pies we would ever taste and even quoted Trip Advisor as a source of support.

So we had a pie and cup of tea and whilst they were OK, they weren’t the best we’d tasted, rather greasy actually. But Lady Di was certainly a character and and definitely brightened up a quiet Wednesday morning.

We had a look around Sandstone’s other attractions:

The pub-cum-store International Hotel:

The memorial to Snowy Lewis, a local military character and base operator from our radio network who   ran the Sandstone base for several years. We first heard Snowy on the radio in 2002.

The fine local historical park :

After our lunch we drove on to Leinster for some fuel, just in case, and then down the Old Agnew Road, the original highway connecting several small gold mines in the area. These days the track and the small communities are now deserted and disintegrating.

We camped just of the busy highway after seeing no one for hours, or overnight either.

17 Sept

I raised my big Yagi antenna to get a network signal from Leinster 50 km away. As a result of concerns on the Oka website, regarding Universal Joint failures, this morning I greased all 4 UJs and ensured grease was purged from all 4 caps on each. 

It was a biting cold wind so I donned my cold weather maintenance gear, despite the sunny, clear blue sky.

We stopped for lunch at Doyles Well, the location of an olden day hotel complex. There’s very little left now, but in its heyday, they had bands and dances, cricket and footy matches and a swimming pool. But with the demise of the local gold industry and difficulties in establishing pastoral industries in the area, the hotel waned and completed closed down in the 1950’s. 

Along the track lower down, Sturt Desert Peas cover the sides of the sides of the road.

The gravel road surprised us with an unusual section of divided road over a small rise. However, there was a bigger surprise over the top.

Part way up a large scratch mark on the road suggested something had happened.

Over the top at the end of the scratch mark was a large mine drilling truck parked wonkily.

We stopped to check that all was OK but the truck was deserted. As I walked around taking a few photos, a smaller truck drew up. It was the youngish owners of the truck who had a mining lease and were moving their drilling truck on to it. However, they had a blowout yesterday which used up their spare wheel and now another tyre had disappeared completely. They’d been into the next “town” to get some help but there was none available.

They really didn’t know what to do next and didn’t have the equipment or expertise to fix their problem on a 20 tonne vehicle. We helped them strap up the dragging axle to the chassis in the vain hope they could continue with the tyreless wheel off the ground but we knew that wasn’t going to work.

They didn’t really appreciate our help either so we left them crawling the truck into the bush where they’ll have to leave it while they acquire another wheel and tyre, and something big to lift the axle with.

We moved on through the fast disappearing township of Kookynie to Niagara Dam, a largish dam built in the 1890’s to service the fast growing township of Kookynie. Sadly as the dam was finished, they found an underground source of water nearer Kookynie so the dam was not needed and never used. And the gold around Kookuynie didn’t last long either which accounts for it’s slow decline too.  All in all a bit of a balls up.

However, Niagara Dam still remains, and is an excellent picnic and free camping spot.

18 Sept

From Niagara Dam we ventured down to the small but not yet disappearing town of Menzies, and its quirky steel plate statutes all around the town. We spent so long checking emails and reading the news that we didn’t take any photos but we have done many times before.

From Menzies its an easy 150km drive to Kalgoorlie and our favourite but free rubbish-strewn bush campsite.

19 Sept

The call of the washing machines could not be ignored, even though our usual laundromat had “Closed” emblazoned on the door. Luckily we found another in nearby Boulder, and while that was doing, I refilled a gas bottle and one diesel tank.

It was getting late and we wanted to see if our friend Robin was at home at his Oka Workshop in Coolgardie on a Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t, but his grandson was there and we had a chat, left a message and took some photos.

Cruising around the town we discovered Coolgardie is now an RV Friendly town with a free 24 hour RV rest area next to the railway station (which hasn’t seen a moving train for many years). We also discovered that tomorrow was “Coolgardie Day”, the day of the year when festivities came to town for the young and young at heart. So fitting into one or both of those categories, we stayed in the rest area so as to have an early start.


20 Sept

For a town of only about 1000 people they really put on a big display and hundreds of carloads of people had come from all over. The main street (which is about 100m wide) was blocked off the and by 9.00am this morning it was filled with stalls, scary fairground rides (and I was only watching), eateries, displays of veteran cars, and a 200 tonne ore truck neatly angle parked in the main street, as is the law in this town.

But for a 200 tonne truck, 2 small plastic chocks under the wheels seemed barely adequate…

It was a bright blue sky sunny day but the wind was bitingly cold. Not Afghan cold you understand but enough to keep your hands in your pockets.

I felt very sorry for the 2 girls in skimpy bikinis standing on boxes (their money making plan being to entice people to pay for them to dance around a bit) but not sorry enough to loan them my jumper (or take their photo).

At half time there was a parade including a police band in Scottish kilts (I bet they were cold in parts too) playing the bagpipes, the local girls volunteer firefighters pulling an old fire truck, a pony parade and a drive past of veteran vehicles and Hell’s Angels.

Later the emergency services put on a sobering display of freeing 2 trapped people from a crashed car using the jaws of life to cut open the car and remove the doors and roof before carefully freeing the passengers.

The “Avenger” was the favourite ride and we were surprised that there was no vomit trail as the passengers alighted…

There was also wood chopping, bands of varying quality, a Maori song and dance display and a fire eater.

But by mid afternoon we had had enough fun and excitement so we returned to the Oka and left town to beat the rush.

We are camped tonight near Wiggiemooltha, (yes Virginia, there is a place called Wiggiemooltha) halfway between Coolgardie and Norseman.

As we are heading east next on the Eyre Highway, that will be the subject of our next blog entry (or blogentary, a word I thought I’d just made up, but sadly someone got there first, just like “thinkative” and “thingleness” which are 16 century words).


Reports of our 2015 travels are continued in these blog sections:

Home to Ningaloo
Newman to Ningaloo
Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards
East across the Eyre Highway

WA Trip 2015 – Newman to Ningaloo

Welcome back, this is a continuation of our 2015 WA trip blog from Newman onwards, until I get tired of editing that is…

22 Aug 2015


So we left Mt Robinson campsite heading north towards Auski Roadhouse, now renamed Munjina Roadhouse, and then west towards Tom Price another important mining town in the Pilbara.

The Great Northern Highway passes through the magnificent Munjina Gorge after which the Auski Roadhouse is now named and there is an excellent lookout/camping area at Togloninni, named for one of the surveyors of the route though the hills.

Auski/Munjina Roadhouse is real Aussie icon, with a forecourt as big as the MCG and parking for dozens of 4 trailer road trains, and you wouldn’t believe the dust they can make at even 0.001kph with their 86 wheels.

From there we could have headed for Tom Price via the Karajini National Park but we’ve done that twice before and although the gorges are spectacular, it’s usually packed with French and German backpackers in “Wicked” campervans.

So instead we took an equally scenic but less travelled and partially gravel route west from Auski Roadhouse which runs north of the Hamersley Range via Wittenoom.

The approaches to Wittenoom look spectacular to the south.

Wittenoom has some very nasty connotations as the source of asbestosis amongst its miners and their families. What remains is now a ghost town stuck in a 1970’s time warp with mostly abandoned streets, shops and houses, with all their possessions, cars, children’s toys etc. still left where they were last used. There appears to be a very few hardy (excuse the unintended and bad taste pun) residents remaining although how they scrape a living is a mystery.

The main street in what used to be a thriving outback town

The Wittenoom Gem Shop

Ironically, Wittenoom Gorge is reputed to be one of the most scenic in the range but access, whilst not restricted, is certainly not recommended with dire warning signs posted along the highway warning of the perils of asbestos, and if you enter the gorge there are signs with skull and crossbones on them strongly recommending the used of breathing apparatus if venturing further.

We aren’t that stupid of course and didn’t go past those signs, we just did a loop around the abandoned township and out again. We had met a Kiwi at Jupiter Well who had gone into the gorge and confirmed its scenic beauty, but he wasn’t worried about asbestosis since it takes 20 years to develop and he didn’t think he had that long anyway.

Further on and we come back into mining territory. However the scenery remains much the same.

The Rio Tinto Gorge is a narrow single lane winding track though some steep sided hills. (“Call up on Channel 40 to announce your presence”).

Several years ago we were alerted to an unadvertised camping area used occasionally by mining people which we also called Rio Tinto Gorge since it’s just past the real gorge. It’s nestled in a beautiful bush setting of spinifex and snappy gums, and although huge mining roads are replacing the small outback tracks, the camping area remains secluded and untouched. Even has a 5 bar Telstra service. So of course that was our campsite for the night.

23 Aug 2015

From Rio Tinto Gorge it’s only 100km or so to Tom Price, a pleasant green town with all the facilities an outback mining town should have, footy oval, RSL club, a small row of shops, hospital and police station. However, being a Sunday, and being in WA, everything was shut, even the public loos. It pays to plan ahead in WA towns.

It did have the obligatory ore truck though.

Fortunately they hadn’t turned off the water supply so we refilled our tanks, drove around the green town and headed south to Paraburdoo. It’s not the shortest route west so we’ve never done that before but it was a really pleasant scenic drive. A bitumen road and even better the Halfway Bridge rest area alongside a waterhole about 50km south with, wait for it, a free WiFi service! Never seen that before in a remote location, and it worked, I tried it. So that was today’s lunch spot.

Paraburdoo is a neatly laid out town with streets on a grid pattern and also quite green, with similar but smaller facilities to Tom Price, and in both towns, the huge mining operations are almost invisible from the town, and also still being Sunday everything was shut.

After a quick drive around the town which was notable for its lack of traffic but lots of kids roaring around on bikes, an unusual sight these days, we continued west towards Nanutarra Roadhouse on the North West Coastal Highway, 350km away.

The road parallels the Hardey River for many km and we located a track down to small campsite near a water hole, so we took advantage of it to camp for the night.

We sat and bird watched for a couple of hours and then while cooking dinner we heard a car arrive. It was a pleasant young French couple who set up camp just behind of us. Bugga, solitude banished, and he even borrowed some supa-glue to mend his shoe.

Then another car came down the track, this time 4 young German girls in a Commodore and a tent who parked in front of us, after we had to move our table and chairs for them to squeeze past. Now we were fully trapped.

It seems to be a feature of the European character to have to be near people, it’s happened to us before, whereas Aussies would never intrude on someone else’s space. J thinks its a case of agoraphobia, fear of open spaces. Personally I think is was agriphobia, fear of agricultural machinery.

Anyway we managed to get though the night and the visitors were very pleasant, especially in their shorts and tee shirts, but we do value our solitude and space.

24 Aug 2015

The road to Nanutarra. It was a long but pleasant drive with more traffic than expected, then it is a supply route to mining towns.

On arrival at the roadhouse, we called Ningaloo Station to check the status of campsites along the beach facing Ningaloo Reef. They had plenty, but warned that the drive in was rough and corrugated and we might not get there in one day.

So we checked into Giralia Station Stay for a night, there being no roadside places to camp in this barren, flat area of the country,  treeless partly due to frequent cyclones which prevents trees growing more than 2 m high and partly because it’s semi-desert anyway.

We’ve stayed at Giralia Station before (and also the very similar Bullara Station nearby) and it hasn’t changed. It was cheap ($20), dusty but very average and our evening’s entertainment was watching the antics of beetles as they launched themselves at any light coloured object and then lay on their backs for ages, gasping and trying to right themselves.

We captured 3 of them and watched them under a glass trying to escape. Strangely when I removed the glass they stayed much as they were, apparently unaware of their new found freedom.

Such was our stay at Giralia Station.

25 Aug 2015

We arrive at Ningaloo Station. And they were right, the track in, which is owned by the local shire, was diabolically bad, very rough limestone and corrugated sand. The 32km took well over an hour and then we had another 12km up the coast on a similar track to the campsites around Lefroy Bay.

A CYA sign erected by the local shire council

But the welcome sight of the blue/green sea and the waves crashing on the reef one km out to sea made it all worthwhile.

For the next few days we didn’t move, except to walk up and down the beach, swim and snorkel on the coral which was close to shore and watch the wildlife. We’ve seen turtles, whales breaching beyond the reef, a couple of dolphins cruising against the flow of the water in the lagoon and a seagull, actually lots of birds, cormorants, pelicans, plovers, finches, and several other species hitherto unknown to birdie science.

Janet who was previously not a good swimmer has really mastered the art of snorkelling without drowning. And I have almost mastered the art of putting flippers on without falling over and looking a total clown.

 Each evening it’s obligatory to sit on the sand and watch the sunset:

When not undertaking aquatic pursuits, I have rigged up my Yagi antenna, pointed it northwards to who knows where, from whence I can get a 3 bar signal when before there was none, and hence we have a fairly good internet connection:

One day we ventured forth to charge the batteries and warm the shower water towards the ruins of a Norwegian whaling station. We never quite got there (it’s only rusting junk anyway, puh) as the sand dunes got a bit too soft for our heavy Oka and without backup support, it was one risk too many. We did see some spectacular sandscapes though:

While watching the sea, a couple of dolphins cruised by:

And so did a dog:

Doing the Titanic: “My Dog Will Go On”

Last night was a special treat for us, since it’s one of those few days per year when the moon rises at almost the same time as the sun sets. Difficult to capture both on camera together though:

Without a bit of help, that is:

Tomorrow (31 Aug) we’ll pack up and leave Ningaloo Station after 6 days relaxing on the sea shore, for the heady delights of Exmouth. We’ve done about all we can do here and we are running low on essential supplies, although we do have enough cake for another month.

Then we have 4 days camping booked in the Cape Range National Park where the facilities are better and the coral is much more abundant and easier to access. There are also different sights to see if the weather or conditions are not clement. Here, with the tracks so rough, there’s not much else to do after swimming, snorkelling and walking (and eating and drinking of course).

31 Aug 2015

Exiting Ningaloo Station was as slow and corrugated as the track in but we did get to see the old lighthouse high on a hill/sand dune. It was in use until an earthquake destroyed the lighting section in 1931 and was replaced by an automated system.

At Ningaloo Station homestead, where we called in to collect our bond money for the camp area key, a pair of sea eagles was nesting on the top of a tall communications tower.

Legal Stuff about Ningaloo Station

Ningaloo Station is a leasehold property of 50,000 hectares of sheep and goat farming, owned by the Lefroy family for the past 80 year. With 50km of frontage on to beautiful Ningaloo Reef beaches, the WA state government is attempting to excise the Ningaloo reef section to create some sort of tourism venture and despite a written undertaking from earlier state governments not to do this, they have now refused the grant the leaseholders a renewal of the lease, which has just expired. 

There are fears that government ownership of the coastal strip will ruin the current beachside camping venture built up by the Lefroy family over many years, with access restrictions, higher costs and tourist “facilities” which current users don’t want or need. Having been there for 6 days I can see the attraction of this unspoilt and undeveloped section of coastline, one of the few left in the country still in its pristine state.

A high court challenge is currently underway to prevent the WA government from proceeding with it’s high-handed plans, and the leaseholders are fairly confident in the outcome. Goliath doesn’t always win and anyway, the cash strapped WA government may not be able to raise the cash to either defend the high court action or the fund the tourism development itself. Let’s hope the judiciary see the unfairness in the situation and come down on the side of sense based on the prior undertakings, and what’s best for the environment, not government heavy-handedness.

Shopping in Exmouth

After the legal discussion, we drove up to Exmouth to do some necessary shopping and then around the tip of North West Cape to Yardie Caravan park to use their laundry. We’d stayed there before and it was quite friendly and satisfactory and close to the Cape Range National Park where we’d booked four nights from tomorrow.

We set up our $2 bargain pack of 2 plastic Chinese mouse traps behind the vegetable drawer, where we thought the mouse may be residing, baited them with some stale bread and went about our business.

A Boo-Boo in the Loo

Maybe because it was the last day of winter or possibly due to last night’s perigeion moon, either way I made a bit of a boo-boo later on, and it was most embarrassing.

I went for my late night loo visit, and after being there a few minutes some other people came into the ablution block. No problem, it often happens, until they started talking in female tones. A sudden dawning.

Did I really come into the ladies loo?

What sort of offence had I committed?

WHAT THE HELL SHOULD I DO NOW?

They started gabbling on in Franglais while splashing and washing and cleaning teeth, going to the loo etc, and all I could do was keep very quiet and wait until they had all gone. Then someone else came in and chatted so there was another delay.


Finally things quietened down a bit and I slipped out past a girl still cleaning her teeth, only to find that the other person who came in had been Janet. She was wondering where I had got to and had a great laugh at my expense once I blurted out my error, while I shall never visit a communal loo ever again (or at least never tell anyone).

1 Sept 2015

First day of spring and having made tea, cooked the breakfast, put the bed away, done the dishes etc, I was accused of calling Janet a harridan because she wanted the shirt off my back for washing.

Well, after consulting a thesaurus, I discovered that the words “shrew, virago, harpy, termagant, ogress, gorgon, martinet, tartar, spitfire, battleaxe, witch or even an Xanthippe” could also have been inferred, when all I actually meant was that I’d be cold with no shirt on. I shall be more careful with my choice of vocabulary in future in the company of English teachers, but I think things are more even now?

Our mouse never made an appearance or hearance during the night and the traps were unsprung this morning, so we assume that the rough tracks from Ningaloo Station were too much for it and that, plus the access denied by our plastic boxes, caused the mouse to decamp for easier pursuits.

Arrival at Tulki Beach Campsite

After the purchase of a $4.90 loaf of frozen bread from the CP shop, we checked in at the National Park. If you keep records of such things we were in Site 10 at Tulki Beach camping area. We set up our extensive camping site, involving erecting the table and 2 chairs, and went for a snorkel at Oyster Stacks, one of the best places to see coral and fishes, but only around high tide since it’s rocky and difficult getting in and out of the water at other times, and fortuitously we had arrived at high tide.

Very windy today and for the past few days. We even had to don jumpers and leggings for our happy hour with the other motley collection of fellow campers. And those campers numbers were tripled by the late arrival of a bus load of teenagers on a school trip. Lots of noisy giggling big-breasted school girls and lanky youths plus a few teachers/leaders. Rather them than me. Girls tents to one side, boys tents to the other and teachers tent in the middle. Yeah, right, as if that’s going to make a difference.

Puts some pressure on the single loo though.

2 Sept 2015

School kids up early and off in the bus for snorkelling, sightseeing or I don’t really care what, at least solitude has returned, until they do tonight. Like a flock of corellas, raucously noisy in the morning and evening, but silent during the day.

Did a long walk on our beach today (Tulki Beach), not the best looking but plenty of interesting birds, footprints to identify, shells to turn over and things to kick around.

The only foot prints on the beach apart from ours were kangaroo prints. We’ve seen roos on the beach here before, they come down to the water’s edge at dusk and seem to nibble the algae off the stones and rocks, must taste like a mouthful of soy sauce.

The wind has dropped a bit today and it’s a bit hotter, so sun-block and hats for tonight’s happy hour.

We did a visit to the visitor centre, which is what they’re for, had an ice cream (who said WA’s economy is in trouble? Can’t be at their prices) followed by an exploratory walk into Mandu Mandu Gorge. We planned the full 3km walk for the morning when it’s not so hot and the sun will be behind us.

Mandu Mandu Beach

Later we did a nature walk on Mandu Mandu south beach which revealed a lot of clams, crabs and other interesting things in the rock pools at very low tide. But then we had to rush back for happy hour.

Clams underwater

A very annoying fly got into the car as we were cooking dinner and then out-smarted me by landing on the fly swat. When you’re a fly in danger that’s probably the safest place to land.

3 Sept 2015

Calmer, warmer start to the morning, but I still don’t know what we’re doing today.

Called in on Channels 1 and 2 on our HF radio this morning since overseas interference (read Indonesian fishermen on our frequencies) was very strong. Got though to Meekathara Base to confirm all was OK.

This morning we did the Mandu Mandu Gorge walk/clamber. It’s a beautiful area full with billions of glistening white rocks and red cliffs but strangely it was a lot tougher than it looks, more of a rock scramble than a walk, and a lot tougher that the last time we did it. Are there sharper and steeper rocks this time, or are we in some way not the mountaineers we used to be?

She didn’t look quite so happy after the climb to the summit

Part way along, successive walkers have created white rock shrines using some of the billions of white rocks and we felt compelled to continue the tradition. After the next big flood, it will all have to start again.

Anyway the views of the gorge leading out to the shore as we returned breathless and aching were spectacular.

After regaining our strength and lunch, we drove down to Yardie Creek, where in 2002, we came across the dry sand bar coming up from Coral Bay on a coastal track. Right now that same creek crossing is covered by 3m of sea water after some high tides had rearranged the sand bar, which is a regular occurrence every few years.

We drove across this creek in 2002, now a large boat is required

Yardie Creek is a very pleasant little area with some nice walks along the creek, the only creek in the park containing permanent water. It also contains sharks, stingrays, mangroves and other nasties that take refuge there as juveniles, for protection against larger nasties while they are growing up. They can be trapped there for several years before mother nature rearranges the sand again to provide access to the open ocean.

On the way back for a shower and happy hour, we called in at a few other camping areas teeming with 50+ caravans and agreed that we like our exclusive 10 site campsite the best.

Packaging laws gone mad:

“Biscuits shown are not actual size”. I ask you?

4 Sept 2015 Would have been my grandmother’s 133rd birthday today, bless her soul.

Found one of Janet’s long hairs in my breakfast Weet-Bix today. Oh, have I not been punished enough in the hair department already that she has to flaunt her surplus hair at me???

This morning while it was cool, I swapped around a couple of wheels, so that a good tyre with a large slash in its side wall (see below) is now on the rear and a worn one with no sidewall damage at all is now on the front. Seems like a safer arrangement. Hard work but it only took about 40 minutes, and with the remainder of the allotted hour, I checked and topped up the rear diff oil.

With the best time for snorkelling between mid and high tide (11am to 2pm today), we drove to Oyster Stacks and spent an hour or so drifting over coral gardens of stag horn, brain and fan corals of all hues, large; bright blue starfish; and hundreds of different types, sizes and colours of fish, some close enough to touch. Being just before high tide, there was no water flow to take us off course.

When I got out of the water, a man wandered down the beach towards us and said “David Ribbans?” Well how could he know that, being 4000km from home? It turned out to be RIck Whitworth, an Oka owner who I had spoken to a few times and met on our website. He was circumnavigating Australia with his wife Sue and they spotted our Oka from the main road a km away and came over to greet us.

He knew we were in the area since they had recently met James, my fellow site administrator in Karratha (who we are seeing next week), who told them to look out for us. He recognised me by my beard from website photos and the fact that we were the only Aussie looking people on the beach, the remainder being French/German /Americans with various degrees of bikini bottom coverage.

Okas 149 and 148 together again at Ningaloo Reef (Oyster Stacks car park)

We spent around 2 hours checking out each other’s Okas and talking technical, had a nice cup of tea, took some photos and then Rick and Sue went south to Yardie Creek (their first visit to NIngaloo) and we went north to Mangrove Bay and the Bird Hide.

In the bird hide were a couple of young birdie people from a “Wicked” campervan, with 2 ft long lenses on their cameras and who talked about stop numbers, focus lengths and was it a Nankeen or Striated Night Heron? (The correct answer is both, plus Eastern Reef Egrets and a White Bellied Sea Eagle).

Tomorrow we are departing the Ningaloo area after nearly 2 weeks on beaches and in the water. We are now clean enough to venture further north into the Millstream Chichester National Park and on to Karratha and parts even more northerly.


Continue enjoying our blog in the next instalment, Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards, or the final section,  East on the Eyre Highway.

WA Trip 2015 Home to Newman via Alice

We’re late starting out on this one, the reasons for which are long and tedious.

We planned a trip across the Gary Junction Road to the Rudall River National Park (which we completed successfully), however even the longest story starts with the first word, and that word was Bugga!

And thrice Bugga!

First there was a wheel wobble problem, followed by frothy gearbox oil, then the leaking of a brand new water tank.

But the worst was the violent wheel wobble problem (called the”Death Wobble” in the US) which took 3 weeks including a trip to Melbourne to resolve. The short story is that the swivel pins in the steering were worn such that they were not under sufficient tension, which allowed them to wobble violently at the sight of any small object, like a matchstick.

Many days, nights and $$ later, all the parts had been repaired and/or replaced and we no longer have any wobbling.

The frothy gearbox oil was a surprise, until I found a breather pipe had been ripped off on our last years desert crossing but didn’t notice until after I’d pressure cleaned the underneath of the Oka, allowing water to enter the gearbox and mixing with the oil creating froth.

I flushed out the gearbox using diesel fuel three times, refilled it with 80W90 oil and all is now well, although I haven’t checked it again recently.

Then a brand new flexible water tank, which we bought to replace a previous 10 year old one which had developed a small split in the seam, leaked it’s 100 litre contents all over the insides of the Oka on our way to Melbourne to visit our granddaughter (and son/d-in-l). So I had to remove it to confirm a tank leak, not just my pipework, and then negotiate a replacement. I tested the replacement first, being a wise virgin, and that one is now working fine.

So at last we are on the road to warmer climates, having reached the heady northern latitude of Mambray Creek, just south of Port Augusta.

Today, some shopping, fuel and a gas bottle refill in PA and then we’re heading up the Oodnadatta Track and some outback travel.

31 July 2015

379km today into PA, then via Quorn, Hawker, Parachilna, Leigh Creek, Copley, Lyndhurst to Farina. All bitumen now except the last 30km, which was very smooth gravel.

Preliminary calculations in the space/time continuum had us arriving spot on 5pm but we actually arrived 15 minutes early at 4.45pm, just before sunset. On that basis we’d have overshot Pluto by several light years.

Farina is a ghost town in the far north of SA about 1/2 way between Lyndhurst and Marree. It’s off the highway a km or so so unless you know it’s there it’s easy to miss, but you shouldn’t, because it’s a nice diversion for an hour or so and now it has a rudimentary signpost. The campground in the creek also makes it a good spot for overnight stay. There are plenty of walks to do and historical locations to visit, like the Afghan Cemetery with graves facing Mecca.

The town was established in the 19th century as a potential crop production area after a positive but overly optimistic report by the SA Surveyor-General George Goyder, of Goyder’s Line fame. It was intended to have a projected population of around 3000 but it never really succeeded and was finally abandoned in the 1960’s after a century of struggle against a harsh outback existence.

The Farina Town plan circa 1878 (courtesy of the Farina Restoration website)

Now Farina is being slowly brought back from a ghost town extinction by the volunteers of the Farina Renovation group. Some shops have/are being renovated (actually just the bakery to date) and lots of signs have been erected, roads have been tidied up and walking trails established.

The Transcontinental Hotel

Janet at the bakery

The campground has had a make over as well with a new shower block but retaining the original wood fired donkey engine to provide hot water (which wasn’t on, our fellow campers are a dirty lot), but otherwise it remains a nice quiet, still, grassy, $5 pp creek bed campground with lots of squeaky corellas in the morning. New walking tails have been established around well sites with copious small pergolas with information plaques.

Farina was always living on the very edge of existence fuelled by good rains in the 1850’s which fooled town planners in Adelaide that there was potential for sustainable outback crop production. It was never going to be, despite numerous attempts to sink wells which mostly found salty or no water.

Whilst the town site and crop production was abandoned, the surrounding country remains a viable cattle station.

1 August 2015

Following the Heritage Walking Trail (which all towns have, even it seems a ghost town), we trudged around the several wells and “government” (ha) bores in the Farina area, which were just adequate to sustain interest in the town’s development and separate investors from their money but quite inadequate to sustain life. “Trudged”, that is, until the nice little posts with historic electrical insulators on the top  which were indicating the route, ran out, leaving us to nimbly backtrack to the campground.

Nevertheless, Farina is slowly coming back to life. 20,000 man or person hours of volunteer work so far is transforming the outback town from an area of crumbling wrecks to something to be wondered over or even admired. The fortitude of the people who lived there, and who still reside in the cemetery, is a testament to the resilience of the time. The slightest hint of an opportunity was enough to galvanise them into action. Try telling that to the youth of today or even the youth of my day.

My first car (a 1952 Ford Consul) and our current vehicle at Farina, 40 years age difference but about the same amount of rust.

Three speed column change, bench seats, if only those springs could talk…

Check out the Farina Renovation Group’s website here. They are always interested in volunteers and donations.

Leaving Farina, around lunchtime, +/- 2 hours, we passed by the Alberrie Station’s “Plane Henge”, an area of weird outback sculptures we first saw about 10 years ago. They’ve deteriorated somewhat since but still show the quirkiness of the originator.

Janet checking her watch by the Time Tree which we originally decorated in hanging time pieces.

The entrance is marked by twin aircraft welded together, now the residence of a flock of galahs.

Nearby there’s also a memorial(?) to the Marree Man, a crop circle type ground sculpture, probably created by bored US service men with a grader and a GPS.

Marree Man from the air

It’s fading now but J attempted to maintain its relevance by imitation.

Later the same day…

When I said only yesterday that we were “on the road to warmer climes”, I did expect it to take more than a day and a half. But no, almost as soon as we left the shopping experience in Port Augusta,  the temperatures started to rise. Last night at Farina it was cool but pleasant but today became horrendously windy and, I kid you not, actually hot.

The huge high pressure cell which has been centred over southern Australia for the past week or so, yes, the one that brought freezing temperatures to Adelaide and places even souther, is now bringing hot northerly winds, from the north as you might expect, and gale force ones at that.

This afternoon on the Oodnadatta Track it reached way over 30º, so warm in fact that we had to break out the shorts and sandals. And J even had to shave her legs just in case we met someone.

It almost made me regret not getting our air conditioning regassed before we left Adelaide. I had wisely decided, based on previous experience, that it wouldn’t get warm until way into the tropics and I could leave such maintenance activities until we reached the Alice. But Tony Abbot has got his way and global warming really is just a myth, except on the Oodnadatta Track.

We battled head and and side winds all day across barren plains and past long abandoned fettlers cottages along the old Ghan line to reach Beresford Siding to camp for the night. Nothing here except the ghosts of railways past, a rusting water tower, iron roofing sheets banging in the wind and lengths of old railway line waiting to trip us up if we need to go outside during the night.

But here we are, happy hour glass in hand, waiting for the cook to create beef rogan josh curry and rice.

For those given to counting the glasses, I think it’s about 5 so far. Luckily, of the 26 litres of wine, port and sherry bought from Dan Murphy’s while there was still one nearby, we still have 25 or so left, not including the block of 30 beers of course. We could last upwards of a month at this rate.

2 August 2015

Up early from the warm night to a cold windy morning. The aforementioned high pressure cell has been replaced by a cold front, and not just mine.

So just what you need in a cold gale is a broken down vehicle to assist. Soon after setting off from a William Creek comfort stop we encountered N and L in their LandCruiser towing an Ultimate Camper Trailer, which had shed a tyre. Shred would be a better word for it. Badly shredded and wound around the axle would describe it best.

The tread had become detached from the sidewall of a trailer tyre, been run over by its own rim and wound itself tightly around the brake drum a couple of times like a scrunchy. That tightened on the brake cable causing the trailer brakes to turn fully on, jamming the wheel and dragging them to a stop. The brake preventing the wheel from turning (which is what they’re supposed to do) and the tyre tread around the brake drum prevented the wheel from being removed from the hub.

The rescued wheel and trail of tread.

“I think you need some assistance” I ventured.

As it turned out we needed about 9 people, who progressively stopped to help, to force the wheel backwards to release the tension, cut the tyre across the tread with knives, tin snips, swear words etc, manoeuvre the recalcitrant tread from around the rim and detach the wheel from the hub with its attached trail of tread.

That was never going to be a one person job. However, we made it after an hour of struggling, against the cold biting wind as much as the sharp cords of the tyre, and got his spare fitted. Luckily there was no damage to the hub or trailer body. He had probably picked up a slow puncture which flattened the tyre leading to the complete failure of the sidewall. Trailers are prone to doing that, we’ve helped several in a similar state since you can’t see/feel what’s happening until after it’s happened.

We followed them up the track for 50km or so, to ensure no further problems and waved them on their way to find another spare tyre.

Lake Eyre

Then, suddenly it was lunchtime at Warinna Siding, which happened to be the exact spot that Sir Thomas Elder dispatched an expedition across Australia in 1891. With 14 people and 44 camels, as you do, they surveyed vast swathes of lower western Australia from South Australia to the Murchison River district in WA, in what was one of the more successful examples of exploration, exactly 6886km in 12 months, without a GPS.

Good lunch spot in an otherwise barren plain

The Elder Memorial

The team was led by surveyor David Lindsay (Elder wasn’t on it, he only paid for it all) but I don’t recall him being rewarded by the naming of any substantial feature, river, mountain, swamp etc. after him. Sad really, considering that notable failures such as Burke (of Burke and Wills infamy) have all sorts of things named after him, towns, books, dig trees etc.

Tonight we are camped at North Creek, eventually, since I incorrectly located a waypoint on the “North Creek” camping icon clearly marked on the map near Mt Dutton. Silly mistake I suppose, I should have known that there were 2 of them, the real North Creek was 30km up the track. I shall have words with the map maker regarding the domestic dispute that ensued: pilot to navigator: “You’re useless”, “No, you’re useless”, “You shut up”, ”No, you shut up”.

Two North Creeks in 30km?

Harmony restored, after a delicious dinner of chicken aux champignons and wine, I had to go outside for a comfort stop. In the silence of the outback, J clonked a saucepan lid loudly behind me which made me wee on my fingers. Luckily, I was about to do the washing up…

3 August 2015

Just arrive in Marla after 800km of gravel road and our first internet for several days. Whooppee!!

Today’s 290km took us up the rest of the Oodnadatta Track, and through the megalopolis of Oodnadatta. The Pink Roadhouse is still there, although looking decidedly faded, and a new general store has arisen just beyond the town boundary, but none of these plentiful attractions caused us to slow down, apart from the 50kph speed limit, let alone actually stop.

Since the last train passed through on the Old Ghan line in 1986, Oodnadatta has hung on as a watering and supply point for persons travelling across the Simpson Desert (which we haven’t) or the Old Andado Track to Alice Springs (which we’ve done twice). Although after a panic attack last night in which I foresaw the potential need for the services of a health professional, it was gratifying to note the existence of a substantial Health Care Centre in the town.

Only 200km  and 2 million corrugations later we reached Marla and no sooner had I established Telstra communications and read (actually discarded) about 17 emails, and started updating our blog, when the sound of another Oka engine pummelled my ears.

Tim and Lorraine in Oka 124 had sidled up next to us and we spent the next couple of hours discussing world events and who had done what and where, with and to their Okas.

Janet and Lorraine between our Okas

We seldom see other Okas on our trips so this was a welcome opportunity to share experiences over a cup of tea/coffee (sadly it was too early for happy hour).

T and L come from Tambo in NSW and are on their inaugural around/across Australia trip in their Oka.

The result was that I didn’t get to complete the blog edit before we had to move on north up the track towards the NT and out of Telstra range, and T and L had to leave south for Coober Pedy.

As we travel north the scenery improved from untidy desert scrub to more attractive desert scrub and we’re camped at the Chandler Rest area, about 100km south of the NT border, glad that darkness will soon delustre the fairly grotty scene outside and a glass or three of wine will complete the process…

4 August 2015

After an evening watching huge road trains rolling past the rest area, all lit up with rows of side lights, this morning we continued up the Stuart Highway and into the NT, where suddenly it was no warmer than SA.

A clear blue sky and therefore full-on sun greeted us a Kulgera and followed us to Erldunda where internet service was reestablished and emus were counted (more than 20).

A splash of fuel, the first since Port Augusta 1000 km ago, and we headed up to Owen Springs Reserve, 60km south of Alice Springs, to camp by Redbank Waterhole, complete in every way except for no water in the hole.

1679 km in 6 days so far, +/- a couple of inches, mostly against strong headwinds. 6.3 km/l or 15.9 l/100km for a 6 tonne vehicle. $1.30/l in Adelaide, $1.87/l in the southern NT and $1.42 in Alice Springs.

Today’s 390km of the Stuart Highway was so interesting that I can recall nothing whatsoever about it.

5 August 2015

Arrive in Alice after a freezing night when a jumper and 2 pairs of socks were barely enough.

Did initial desperation shopping, the washing, hair cut for Janet and I bought a couple of expensive $7 shirts in Kmart to replace those someone forgot to pack, but having to pay 50ç for spending a penny is a bit rich.

Camping on an area of scrub land just south of Alice Springs where the Finke Desert Races are held. We got bogged there once but not this year, it’s very dry and dusty.

6 August 2015

Up early in the extreme cold, ice on the windscreen etc, to get our air-conditioning re-gassed. 0º is the perfect conditions for such an event, but it will warm up so we needed it done while we can.

Then more real shopping, food, fuel, water.

Back at our campsite I refixed the leaking water tank, yes, the one I’d first fixed before leaving home. I had replaced the tank with another identical item, I thought, but in 10 years, the French manufacturer had slightly changed the thread on the filler cap so the old one didn’t quite fit the new one and leaked a bit (actually a lot). So I replaced the old filler cap with the new one and all is OK again. I tested it properly this time by pumping water into it from another tank, but it did make a bit of mess during the process.

Then, Oh Joy of Joys, the cricket is on again. With every expectation of a strong Aussie comeback, I connected up the TV module to my computer and tuned into Imparja TV which is showing the Channel 9 telecast in the NT. Joy soon turned to despair as wicket after wicket tumbled and it was left to our fast bowlers to push us past 50 in the shortest test innings on record.

No matter I said, full of optimism still, the English will now face the same pitch conditions as the Aussies and we’ll show them. And show them we did, just how mediocre it was possible for a professional cricket team to become.

I retired a dejected soul.

7 August 2015

Another very cold night, not helped by the cricket score, -1º but a warm sunny day, in fact 3 cloudless days in a row so far, but nowhere near our record of 44 consecutive cloudless days in 2012.

Re the cricket, at least this morning’s social media provided some good smiles (“The English team has successfully avoided the follow-on”, “At least the run rate was good” etc), but with dual English/Aussie nationalities, I was sorely tempted to do a Syria and change sides, something I have never contemplated before and won’t be doing now either.

After a final top up of fuel and water so we have all our tanks fully full (270l of fuel and 250l of water) plus a refilled gas bottle, we waddled out of Alice Springs along Larapinta Drive through the West Macdonnells, which is a very scenic drive.

We stopped for lunch at a very scenic lookout when we were set upon by a swarm of bees intent on carrying off our lunch. Whether they were the bitey kind or not we didn’t want to find out but they were a lot smarter than flies and managed to squeeze through small openings.  We quickly closed all the doors and windows and ejected those that made it through the fly screens and moved on. Scenic, yes, dangerous, also yes.

Camped at Redbank Gorge, the most westerly gorge in the Macdonnells, and did a walk into the gorge. 20mins each way was the promise but it took us a good hour and a half for the round trip and was quite demanding, scrambling over rocks like a pair of teenagers who had spent too much time in front of the tele. Had our photos taken by a kind Japanese family, and when I slowly asked where they were from in my clearest Aussie accent, she said “Perth”.

We were quite hot when we returned from our scrambling and had to reduce our stocks of beer and cider somewhat to compensate.

8 August 2015

The bitumen now lasts along Larapinta Drive as far as the Tylers Pass turn off which connects up with the Mareenie Loop Road via Gosses Bluff meteorite crater as a nice long (540km) trek from Alice Springs to Watarrka (Kings Canyon) and Uluru (Ayers Rock) . We however turned the other way, north towards Haasts Bluff and Papunya. This is a rocky rough track but fortunately only 100km or so.

Near Haast’s Bluff is a memorial to Frederick Blakeley, explorer and friend to aboriginals, whose main claims to fame were his ill fated attempt to find Lassiters Reef and his passion for riding across Australia on a bicycle.

Just a bit further on we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. No signs, but I swear it felt warmer as soon as we crossed into the tropics so I checked the thermometer, 23.5º, and the latitude of the tropic?, 23.5º. How likely is that? Actually very likely. Every time Adelaide’s temperature reaches 34.9º, it’s the same as its latitude. Luckily it never quite reaches its longitude.

As the day wore on, the temperature rose steadily to 27º, and time to check our new air conditioning. The compressor and the front fans turned on OK  but the rear/overhead fans didn’t. Bugga, so we stopped and I checked the fuses and the associated relays, which I swapped around, and all was then working and cooling things down well, just dirty contacts. So our Alice Springs investment in Thursday morning’s 0º has paid off.

Papunya, a medium sized Aboriginal town, is laid out from above as a series of neat interconnecting circles, but at ground level it’s a fairly grubby settlement which is hard to find your way out of. You have to turn right at the basketball court down a dusty track which is actually the main road west to Kintore, although there are no signs to say so. Fortunately our moving map navigation system showed us the way.

The Kintore Road (also know as the Gary Junction Road) was constructed by Len Beadell in the 1960’s as one of the access tracks for the British/Australian atomic weapons test program. Hard to believe that any government would allow atomic testing to be carried out on the Australian mainland, but those were different times with different priorities.

Anyhow, the Kintore/Gary Junction Road thus far is quite a smooth outback track with the occasional sandy dips to catch out the unwary.

We passed by the most impressive hills of Mt Liebig and the small settlement of Illili, which looks on the map more like a bar code than the name of a location (and not to be confused with Illpili further down the track).

We are camped tonight behind one of Len Beadell’s plaques which he placed at regular intervals as he constructed his network of tracks in the 1950’s and 60’s.

9 August 2015

I’m a worry wart, I worry about fuel consumption, tyre wear, which shirt to wear etc. and today was no exception, except to those we added the adverse state of the track, whether we should have come this way at all, what if something breaks etc.

But here we are nearly 200km from the nearest community having a nice campfire, a drink in the warm evening sun and excellent meal of pork fillet in a ginger sauce on a bed of rice and stir fried veggies. How could it be better than that?

We left our Beadell Plaque campsite heading west towards Kintore, and the top of the Sandy Blight Road (which we did a few years ago). The track started off quite smooth but as soon as we passed a “Grader Ahead” sign, things got worse, corrugated, rocky and rough. Our speed dropped from 60 to 30kph while my frustration level increased from medium to high.

The temperature did likewise rising to 28º so it was back to shorts, tee shirts and aircon for the afternoon. We crossed the NT-WA border and into the welcoming arms of the Shire of East Pilbara without the usual quarantine kerfuffle, but suddenly the track stayed much the same.

We did see our first camel today, a fairly scruffy beast who was still learning the road rules, and termite mounds have started to emerge.

After 237km today, we reached Mt Tietkens (543m), a very pretty hill just 10km inside WA, with an excellent (and deserted) camping area at its feet. Even though it was now only just after breakfast in WA time, we decided to stop here for the night.  We made use of firewood someone else had collected yesterday to construct an adequate fire to burn our rubbish and roast the pork, although it could so easily have been the other way around.

Nearby someone had constructed the world’s shortest walking trail.

It starts with a near vertical incline up 6 steps cut in the hillside, followed by a steep 1/2 metre decline for a couple of metres, a sharp left turn and a 2m rise to the nearby termite mound summit. All of 4.5 metres total distance.

And by the way this has been our 6th consecutive cloud free day.

This is one of those places where you don’t need to dig a hole, the dingoes will only dig it up again overnight and feast on truffles.


10 August 2015, would be my mum’s 104th birthday today.

Being a nice warm day and we were standing on a good firm base of solid rocks, I decided to change a wheel. One tyre which is s bit worn, has become badly chipped up on the rocky track surface and before it fails, I’d rather like to change it so we still have 2 useable spares, rather than 1 1/2. And so I did, took about 45mins of back breaking work but all went OK.

Several interesting low ranges of hills today, we lunched at the Pollock Hills, but we could have chosen the Dovers Hills or Mt Webb.

Started the sand dune section mid afternoon, some sandy sections quite difficult.

Today we were driving through the Gibson Desert:

Although at times you wouldn’t know it was a desert with a beautiful 30km section of Desert Oaks (Casuarina Decaisneana):

Sadly this was followed by a long burn out section leading almost to Jupiter Well which made me quite grumpy. This is one of the spectacular areas I had been looking forward to. Fortunately the surrounds of the campsite have not been too badly affected and the hand pump is still OK:

Here I’m using the same pump in 2007, new mechanism now:

Plenty of fresh water here so we’re staying for a couple of days to do washing etc. and recuperate from 800km of gravel tracks from Alice Springs.

Did a walk round of the other 3 vehicles camped here to make their acquaintance and have a friendly chat. All going the other way so we gave them our track info and vice versa.

Had a nice evening outside and cooked chicken à la veggies on the outside BBQ.


11 August 2015

Feel much better today after bacon, eggs, tomatoes, fried potatoes and toast for breakfast. Then I fixed the rear side door mechanism which prevented the door from remaining shut, which is a bit of a show stopper. Had to take the door mechanism apart, de-grime the and re-lubricate the sliding plates. All OK now.

With a fine warm dry breeze blowing it was only sensible that we did the washing. Here’s a view of our beautiful (and free) shady campsite covered wall to wall in drooping desert oaks, from the socks drying on the left, across to the toilet tent on the far right.

Doesn’t look like we are 100’s of kms from the nearest town does it? (Newman 700km west, Alice Springs 800km east, Halls Creek 600km north, nothing at all south).

After lunch we walked to the site of the original Jupiter Well, dug in 1961 and named after the planet whose reflection was seen on the surface of the newly created well.

Nothing much to be seen there after 54 years and the current bore was sunk in ?????

Although we only walked a few 100 m from our campsite, it was strangely worrying, being so remote, hot, dry and alone, and it was only 25º today. Alfred Gibson, in whose desert we are travelling, got stranded alone in this desert after his camels bolted and he was never seen again. A horrendous fate to contemplate.

There are 3 other vehicles camped here so we organised a happy hour this afternoon with all their occupants (Terry, a Kiwi, Tony and Lee-Ann, Graeme and Elaine, sister of Tony) to swap anecdotes about outback travel.

12 August 2015

It’s surprising just how much clutter you can distribute in one’s day’s camping. We had stayed for an extra day at Jupiter well to relax and do the washing (mutual opposites?) and we sat outside for most of the day. So there were chairs, a table, stubby coolers, drinks, camping lights, toilet-tent/loo etc, rubber door mats to combat dust, washing line, BBQ cooker and spade, all of which had to be reinstalled in their correct locations before we could drive over to the water pump to replenish our supplies.

Despite all that, due to the weird WA timezone, we were still on the road by 9.00am. My internals have not yet adjusted to getting up with the sun at 6 am but not having lunch until 12.30.

155km later, we had said lunch at Gary Junction, a 3 way track junction which gives the Gary Junction Road (GJR) its name (Gary was Len Beadell’s son). The junction marks the end or start, depending on your orientation, of the GJR, the Jenkins Track which leads to the Canning Stock Route, and the Gary Highway which leads south past Windy Corner and ultimately to the Gunbarrel Highway, Len Beadell’s best known outback track.

Oil drums and a visitors book mark the middle of the 3 way junction. We saw no one all day.

The plaque placed by Len Beadell on the turned up top of an oil drum. He used his revolver to drill the screw holes.

We’ve been this way before and at the junction there are a couple of oil drums, one of which contains a visitor’s book in a steel enclosure into which travellers write their life stories, or a cheery one-liner for others to never read. We are no exception and when we looked back through the dusty, faded exercise books, there was our 2007 inscription, still looking like I wrote it yesterday, untidy, grammatically obnoxious but factually correct.

Our previous inscription dated 1/6/07

We added our current Hello’s, and not being able to think of anything both witty and family friendly, took some photos to compare with our last visit and motored on. In doing so I inadvertently drove over a bolt sticking up out of the road, probably the remnants of a trig marker point. Luckily I went right over it, so the main tread of the rear tyre took all the force, not the side wall, and 60km later all seems well.

On a previous visit we travelled down the Gary Highway and saw no one in 5 days and 800km until we reached Warburton on the Great Central Road (not one of Len Beadell’s tracks). When I researched the Gary Highway on our return I discovered that there was no Wikipedia entry for the Gary Highway, so I wrote one and you can still see it here. There’s a photo in it I took of our Oka and Janet in her blue shirt at Veevers Meteorite Crater part way down. I mention this because someone else tried to claim ownership of my photo until I complained to Google who graciously reversed the credit. Google does have a soul after all, albeit a small one.

Later in the afternoon, we reached the Canning Stock Route (CSR) at Well 33, 1076km from Alice Springs and we still have 70l of fuel left. We’ve done up and down the CSR before but this time we are heading straight across it.


The CSR is the world’s longest 4WD track, over 2000km across thousands of difficult sand dunes and is Not Easy. Many vehicles have succumbed to its risks and I didn’t want to add to that total.

Refuelling at Kunawaritji’s new fuel depot:

We have now moved from the Gibson Desert to the Great Sandy Desert, although I failed to notice the join, and tomorrow we’ll fuel up at Kunawarritji Community and head for the Telfer Gold Mine where we can turn south to the Rudall River National Park (now renamed the Karlamilyi NP).


13 August 2015

Had a good day today, starting with a spectacular sun and moonrise out of our rear window across the desert.

But then there was a sad moment. We were camped at Well 33 last night with several other vehicles on a Tag-Along-Tour half way down their 3 week trip on the CSR. Sadly one lady’s mother has just died, so she and her husband have had to abandon their trip, set off alone 1200km east to Alice Springs, the nearest large airport and a 3 or 4 day drive on the same track we just came on, to catch a plane to Brisbane. This would have upset the other members of their party as well. One of the problems of being a remote location is that despite the advances in communications, the tyranny of distance remains the same. We know the feeling.

Anyway, after breakfast (when we had ice cubes in our milk since I forgot to turn the fridge down last night), we filled with delicious well water, refuelled with 160l of diesel at Kunawarritji Community store (at $3.40/l) and bought some groceries from their sparsely stocked shelves. The total bill was over $500, but this is a very remote location so the prices are very understandable and the local people are very nice and friendly. And it’s good fun watching the dollars ticking up on the fuel pump, like a poker machine.

We set off up the track towards Punmu, a small aboriginal settlement 185km west, just inside the Rudall River National Park. When we stopped for lunch I put some rubber mats down under the engine to repair a wire to the compressor which got ripped off somewhere along the way. Not a long or difficult job but it prevented my compressed air compressor from working. We had seen no one before or since on this track but in the 5 minutes I was fixing the problem, 3 vehicles stopped to render assistance, all of them friendly local aboriginals. One of them even offered me a beer to help my work which is very unusual. He had a smashed windscreen which he said happened this morning when a bush turkey (bustard) flew up and hit it.

We crossed Lake Auld, a dry salt lake with a good mirage hiding the opposite shore and on through very scenic sand dune country.

Pumnu’s impressive entrance statement:

We passed Punmu and found a nice campsite nestled amongst white barked snappy gum trees:

It was the former site of a road or mine construction team. I logged in on our HF radio to Adelaide Base, more than 2200km away as the emu flies, to tell them our location, travel plans and state of well being and got a 3 out of 5 signal reading, pretty good for such long distance communications. When there’s no one around for 100’s km, it’s comforting to  be in regular contact with the human race and who can help when needed. The other morning a vehicle broke down (no engine oil) on the Barkly Highway in eastern NT and the VKS network organised assistance from a motoring organisation.

14 August 2015

Our 11th sunny day and another good day.

It was only 10km or so from our snappy gum campsite to Lake Dora. This is a dazzling salt lake into which the Rudall River flows, when it has water in it. From there the NP access track is a 100km further on past the Telfer Gold mine.

We dazzled too…

Owned by Newcrest Mining (if you listen to the resources sector of the daily business news) the Telfer Gold Mine is one of the largest in the world and tucked away in a remote corner of WA’s Great Sandy Desert so it’s very difficult to access. The spoil heaps are visible from 50km away and the size of the mine can be imagined from the “Golf Course” which is shown on the survey maps. Being in the desert, we can only wonder what colour the greens really are.

It worried us somewhat when we encountered a large “No Entry Without Prior Approval” sign but we had no option but to drive up their huge mine track anyway and plead ignorance when necessary. Fortunately the tourist police were busy counting their nuggets today so there were no checks on vehicles and we drove past the main entrance and on to the Rudall River access track.

We passed through the very scenically named Karakutakati Range of hills on a very rough and slow track to Christmas Pool which I had heard of but knew nothing about. Stand by for a history lesson!

No water in Christmas Pool, it’s not Christmas!

Christmas Pool is a waterhole on a small unnamed creek in the Paterson Range. It’s dry at the moment but was used by aboriginals for thousands of years as a wet season meeting place and kitchen. They called it “Wantanmata” and ground the seeds which formed their main diet on the rocks around the waterhole. Their deep grinding marks are still quite visible.

The name Christmas Pool was given to the location rather later by William Rudall on 25 December 1896 when he camped here on an expedition to locate the missing members of the Calvert Scientific Expedition. [If you’ve read our report of last year’s crossing of the Great Sandy Desert, yeah right, you’ll recall how we crossed the path of the Calvert Expedition very close to where 2 of his party went missing and whose dessicated bodies were found 6 months later].

The plaque is almost unreadable but basically says what I said

The names of Rudall’s party are all inscribed on the rocks around the pool, all except his own. HS Trottman, Alfred Crofton, Jack Connaughton in 1896/97 and other early explorers, Jack Matthews in 1905 and Henry Talbot (HWBT) in 1914. Other later inscriptions are considered as graffiti and most have been obliterated by aboriginal stone chipping.

There is also a fairly clear aboriginal stone chipped emu in the rock face but it took a bit of discerning because its head is missing.

Can you see the Emu?

Arty-farty tree roots in the rock wall of the waterhole:

All in all an interesting afternoon, so nice in fact that we’ve camped here tonight in a beautiful valley of red rocky hills covered in spinifex and studded with snappy gums.

Tomorrow we’ll move on to Desert Queen Baths, a string of permanent water holes on Rooney Creek in the Broadhurst Range of hills.

15 August 2015

A cloudy day, bugga it, now I’ll have to reset my cloudless day counter.

A warm but pretty drive south from our Christmas Pool campsite past Moses Chair, a large round but otherwise featureless hill. Looks more like a beanbag than a chair. One can only conjecture about its name, maybe it’s reminiscent of Mt Sinai, “an arid mountain in NE Egypt”,  where it is supposed Moses received the Ten Commandments, several years before Charlton Heston made them popular.

Moses Chair looking more like a Beanbag

Whilst pretty, the track south was very annoyingly corrugated. However a black dingo ran in down the track in front of us for 10 minutes, faster than we could drive (5km), before deciding the sharp spinifex was less annoying than the big white vehicle following it. Quite a feat of endurance in this hot dry climate.

Black Dingo galloping ahead of us for 5km

We also disturbed a large brown camel which eventually wandered off the track and bellowed at our inconsideration, and several clumps of pretty flowers making use of the recently burnt out landscape.

There’s a hand pump just off the track, probably installed by earlier mining exploration teams, which produces cool clear drinking water for thirsty travellers and local wild life. “We” tested it:

A small wheel track of to the right caught our attention so we investigated and discovered Coolbro Creek waterhole, a permanent oasis for wild life in an arid environment. After we’d investigated and recorded the waterhole, 2 vehicles arrived and disgorged 4 birdie people, all strung about with cameras and binoculars and talking about Princess Parrots and Red Backed Kingfishers and had we seen any etc. We chatted for a while and then us “novices” as they unkindly referred to us as, left them to explore and catalog the birdlife.

Further on we turned down a narrow track to Desert Queen Baths (DQB), a series of waterholes in the Rooney  Creek, and one of the magical places in the NP. The track is only 18km but is guarded by a severe warning of difficulties ahead, unmaintained, major wash-aways, narrow, rough and steep. And so it was, all of those things.  Thrice I had to stop and walk ahead to select the least risky path for our Oka, and once we had to clear some large rocks from the side of the track so I could deviate around a steep wash-away to avoid the risk of a roll-over.

No one here when we arrived, but our birdie friends and 2 other camper trailers arrived just before dark, but still a very scenic and peaceful place nontheless.

16 August 2015

“Never get between the door and a woman’s full bladder”. This was one of the risks of outback travel I learned early this morning but hadn’t previously considered. It certainly shouldn’t be underestimated.

After an outdoor breakfast of eggs, bacon and fried potato, we packed a small lunch, lots of water, the camera, a GPS and fly hats and set out on a trek to the waterholes.

Nature has an annoying habit of making the best places the most difficult to access, and these waterholes are no exception. In 4 hours we managed to rock-hop/scramble our way to 4 waterholes, a total distance of 3.5 km. There are a lot more water holes around but they are too difficult to access without a helicopter.

When we did the walk last time, in 2007, we only went half this distance, stopping for lunch on what we called Apricot Rock, since we found a piece of dried apricot on it. This time the apricot was no longer there but there was some orange peel, so we carried on to a more salubrious rock.

Apricot Rock, no apricot in 2015

In one pool we saw a few small ducks with yellow flashes under their eyes and reddish brown necks. Consulting our bird book later revealed no conclusive identification but we suspect it’s an Australasia Grebe in mating colours.

It was a hot, knee/ankle wrecking walk and not without its risks, we had a few near misses and got a bit lost on our way back (every rock looks like every other one and you don’t leave footprints on rocks to follow), and when we got back everything was hot, aching and/or needing TLC.

The afternoon was spent recuperating in the shade with some cool drinks.

17 August 2015

Brilliant sunny day after a cool clear night.

After the extravagant exoticnesses of yesterday’s bacon and eggs, it’s back to Weet-Bix today.

Before leaving I cleaned out the dust and dirt from one of the window channels so we can now at least open one rear window. Next week I might try another one.

The drive out of DQB was, not surprisingly, just as tortuous as the way in and the track south was just as corrugated. We passed perky miss Compton’s Pinnacle.

“Miss” Compton’s Pinnacle

Near the Rudall River crossing we turned up a track for lunch at No 11 Pool, where we met a couple of former Kiwi’s (Sean and Hillary) in a dark green Land Rover TDi Defender.

Later we met again at Tjingkulatjatjarra Pool where they are camped near the waterhole and they saw what was probably a Black Snake hunting at the water’s edge. But Black Snakes come in various colour schemes and Hilary’s photo showed a snake with half orange, half green body with a black head. For black snakes, obvious cross hatching of scales is a better identifier than colour. Either way they are not to be trifled with, they’re very dangerous and we are very remote from any antivenom supplies.

Common Brown Snake, Black Snake/Mulga/King Brown Snake (don’t rely on colour to identify):

We are camped higher up on the river bank, which is not so nice, but in a snake free zone.

There’s a big Black Snake somewhere behind us…

Reminder note on snake bite treatment, mainly for ourselves:

Immediate Pressure Immobilisation Bandaging (tight like for a sprained ankle) over as much as possible of the affected limb starting with the bite area, with complete movement prevention, is the ONLY successful method of slowing the spread of envenomation while urgent medical assistance is sought (brought to the patient preferably, not vice versa).

Later in the afternoon, we enjoyed a couple of hours chatting with S&H over a few drinks about travel in Oz and in the Middle East and India.

Ducks in this pool were more easily identified than in DQB and confirmed our earlier siting as Australasian Grebes.

A plaque on a tree next to the pool describes the 1974 travels of the Ives brothers in this area following the explorations of (probably) their father in the late 30’s.

Travel in Australia in pre-war days would have been very difficult since up to 1940, only 2% of Australia had been formally mapped, mostly the east coast. The war accelerated this process but it still took another 20 years before the whole country was adequately mapped by completion of the Australian Geodetic Survey program which ran from 1951 to 1965 and incorporated the survey work undertaken during Len Beadell’s road construction network.

18 August 2015

Another glorious sunny day at Tching-kula-tja-tjarra Pool, which is exactly how it’s pronouciated. I called in to Alice Springs base and actually pronounciated it that way with some conviction and the base operator actually knew where I meant. It’s commonly referred to as “T-Pool” amongst commoner folk.

All up and breakfasted before 7am, only 6 hours ‘till lunchtime! It’s a nice place and tempting to stay here another day but all that does is use up resources for no progress, so it’s southwards towards the Talawana Track today.

S&H left heading towards Marble Bar and then Ningaloo and we agreed we might meet them somewhere down the track or at Ningaloo.

We drove up a nearby hill to see the view but the southern part of the park is nothing like as scenic as the northern section so I’m glad we came in from that direction this time.


When we stopped, with a bump, I found this large boulder (which I’ve moved) wedged against the rear wheel. How I missed it with the front wheel is a mystery.

We backtracked from T-Pool to the main track which was quite a difficult little 8km and crossed the actual (but dry) Rudall River after stopping to re-read the plaque. It hasn’t changed since 2007.

The sandy Rudall River crossing

We thought  that Kalkan Kalkan Soak sounded interesting but we were disappointed, no water and a tricky little manoeuvre needed after I went a bit too far into the river gravel. However I extracted ourselves with a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and returned to the main track.

It might be called the “Main Track” but the next 50km was very corrugated sand and the best we could do without shaking J’s bra off was 20kph.


We stopped for lunch in the only nice spot on the track.

Eventually we turned right on to the Talalwana Track, which is a very wide gravelly/sandy track where even 70kph wasn’t out of the question. We went looking for a superb campsite we found in 2007 after the Oka engine just stopped near here, due to a wiring problem. No such problem this time round, but neither did we find the same camping spot. Instead we located a small track and very nice campsite under a few small Desert Oak trees.

We had a campfire to burn our burnable rubbish and cooked sausages and beans on the red hot coals (in a dutch oven of course, we’re not cave persons!), which we consumed in conjunction with Serge’s home made red wine. Outback decadence.

Later we watched the stars through our nick-nocs and put the Hubble space telescope to shame with our astronomical observations. “Ooh, is that a comet?”, “No just an aeroplane”. “Why is the Southern Cross lying on it’s side?”. No answer was forthcoming to that one so we went inside to do the dishes instead.

19 August 2015 our 43rd wedding anniversary.

Beautiful pink sunny start to the day.

Finally refitted a fly screen to the window previously de-gritted so we can not only open it but also keep out flying insects, which are becoming more plethoric as we head more northerly. While doing so, a large buzzy fly came in and now of course can’t get out. How bloody ironic.

While refitting a fly screen to a window,

a large buzzy fly came in and now of course can’t get out.

How bloody ironic.

The rest of the drive along the Talawana Track was pretty ho-hum, through cattle stations and soft boggy muddy semi-desert. Balfour Downs and Ethel Creek Stations, both we suspect are indigenous owned due to the number of abandoned and rusting car wrecks along the trackside.


We splashed across Fortescue Creek, the first time in 3700km we’ve got our feet wet.

Fortunately, in some ways, there were no rest areas and even small tracks we could pull off into to camp.

So we reached the Newman to Marble Bar highway late and tired but happily there was a rest area in a beautiful area of bushland just opposite the junction, and if you ignored the wrecked cars, broken bottles and assorted recycling that wasn’t, it was quite a nice place to stop.

You can just see a wrecked car on the left under the tree.

20 August 2015 

A beautiful scented aroma entered the Oka for most of the night through our newly fitted fly screen from the plethora of native shrubs that are all in bloom, mauve Mulla Mullas, yellow Wattle and purple Solanum flowers.

So inspired was I by the rubbish tip of a rest area we resided in last night that I wrote a poem about the colours of the outback, entitled “The Colours of the Outback”:


Red is the colour of dazzling sunsets, bleeding to where red sand lies,
Pink is the colour of a sunrise warm, transforming to blue of the skies,
Purple and mauve are the flowering shrubs, home to grey insect flocks,
Green is the colour of lush soft spinifex, set in a sea of black rocks,
Orange glows bright from big hot sand dunes, where white are the camels’ bones,
Silver glints from dumped VB cans, and brown are the cars’ rusting groans.


Words-bloody-worth, eat your heart out.

‘Twas but a 50km stones’s throw to Newman by carriage and pair where a Laundromat was sought, unsuccessfully, so we booked into a caravan park for $26 (inc. oldies discount) to get the washing done, fill with water legally etc. etc.

Newman is BHP Billiton’s main iron ore mine site and the location of the largest open cut mine in the world, 5km long, 1.5km wide and deep enough to fill quite a few olympic sized swimming pools and/or land some jumbo jets.

It also has a range of huge ore trucks on display:

3.7 tonnes per tyre, times 4,  equals a lot of rubber.

I could use a wing mirror that size on our Oka…

On a hilltop outside the town are a couple of huge steel statues of a man and a woman, seemingly holding on to the 220kv power lines.

21 Aug 2015

The washing washed the shopping shopped, emails read, cricket watched, calls made to relies all, water and gas supplies satisfied and tanks refilled (with 8ç/l off if I bought 2 Mars Bars, no contest), we sallied forth north from Newman.

On the way we came across this recovery process. A trailer had become detached from its prime mover and its load was being removed prior to truck recovery.

From the size of the crane it was a very heavy load.

One our rear tyres is becoming very chipped and one tread block was imminently about to get ripped off. So to avoid anything penetrating the cords beneath it, I “Araldited” the tread block back on:

100kms later and the tread block is still there doing its job:

We reached the Mt Robinson Rest Area in mid afternoon and here we shall stay tonight, quite a picturesque location at the foot of Mt Robinson, surprisingly enough.

Backtrack for a moment to the Talawana Track on 19th August

Later that morning on the Talawana Track we came across a mystery. This almost new Toyota was seemingly abandoned on the side of the track. It’s not unusual to see abandoned vehicles in Aboriginal areas, when their cars break down they just leave them to rust away and go and get another one. But this didn’t look like an aboriginal vehicle, it was too new and clean.

So we stopped and approached it cautiously in case it was some sort of Peter Falconio type axe-murderer scam, but the ute was deserted.

I carefully checked but there no one was inside and all the doors were locked, so we scouted around in case someone had gone behind a bush, or bird-spotting or what ever, but there was no trace of anyone and there were only only a couple of footprints outside the drivers door leading nowhere. How strange?

I took some more photos with the intention of telling the police about it when we reached Newman the next day, and drove on.

An hour or so later we came across another similar vehicle parked on the side of the road, but this time there was a man standing by the driver’s door and someone in the passenger’s seat. Whoa! What’s going on here??? This is a very remote and lonely track and it was all getting slightly scary.

Scary moment on a lonely track.

The man flagged us down as we approached and being suspicious we stopped short of him and waited for him to approach us. He was a dark coloured man who I initially thought was aboriginal but turned out to be African, neatly dressed and well spoken.

I lowered the window and he said he was lost. He only had a simple hand drawn paper map and was trying to locate Parnagurr, a small Aboriginal community about 150km up the track we had come from. But why 2 vehicles and one abandoned?

Kiki with his “navigation” system.

It seems they had both come from Newman, 300km away, in separate vehicles. The passenger, also an African lady in full African dress and holding a Sat Phone, was heading for Parngurr. The man was escorting her as far as the Jigalong track junction after which he would return to Newman and she would continue to Parngurr alone.

But they had missed the junction which was very small and had no signposts, so they had taken one vehicle and returned to look for it, to ensure they were on the right track, leaving the other vehicle, which we found. Not finding the junction for a second time they stopped and waited, as it happens, for us to come along.

We showed the man (Kiki was his name) where we were and where Parngurr was on our map system but it took some time for him to grasp the geography of the area. Eventually he was happy that he knew where they were and where to go and we left them to continue their journey(s).

Navigation all sorted out and they were sent on their way.

So the mystery was cleared up, but it still struck us as very strange that 2 African people who were obviously new to Australia should be driving around the outback, alone and in new vehicles, unsure of where they were, with inadequate maps and heading for an Aboriginal community. But for what purpose?

We never saw them again so we assume Kiki escorted the lady all the way to Parngurr (more than 400km from Newman) rather than return early.

Australia is certainly a strange place.


New Blog sections for 22nd August 2015 onwards

Reports of our 2015 travels are continued in subsequent posts:


Newman to Ningaloo
Ningaloo Northwards and then Southwards
East across the Eyre Highway

Farina, a Ghost Town Reemerging from its past

We’ve visited and stayed at Farina just off the Oodnadatta Track many times and its fascination as a ghost town never leaves us.

Once laid out as a busy rural town of several hundred residents with a grid of streets, businesses and a railway station, it gradually succumbed to the remote harshness of the desert environment but was only finally abandoned in the 1960’s.

The Transcontinental Hotel at Farina:

This is an ABC Landline report of Farina and its re-emergence from the past.

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2013/s3802729.htm

You can also visit the Farina Restoration Project here.