Friday - Monday, 17-20 December
We were up a little earlier, partly due to the extreme heat – we had four successive 44-degree days with no cooling other than the car air conditioner – and checked in at the Information Centre to receive the news that the bushfire was well-contained and no impediment to our journey. Everyone has told us that the road conditions deteriorate badly as you head east so we were glad of the first 51 kilometres of bitumen. Then it was gravel for several hundred kilometres, but surprisingly good gravel with absolutely nothing to hint at the conditions predicted (apart from the ferocious heat) and certainly far better than many of the roads we experienced earlier in our Aussie Odyssey. There were plenty of corrugations, some pretty trying, but nothing we haven’t experience for many hundreds/thousands of kilometres before.
A grader had obviously been through very recently although we never saw it and it had obviously focussed exclusively on the very wide verges instead of the road itself - but it was all much less terrifying than everyone had warned us about.
We had a vicious trailing wind almost all day and this caused some places to be so thick with dust that visibility was very poor, sometimes for a kilometre or more at a time. The first Roadhouse at Tjukayirla was closed due to Covid restrictions so we simply drove past and eventually made camp after 320 kilometres at an old road workers camp clearing. We ran the generator all night to try to keep things cold in both the car and van fridges, but it was so hot that they struggled a bit pathetically right through the trip.
A quirky thing we had read about was the propensity for travellers on this road to count the number of abandoned wrecked vehicles they passed. One article we read said that there were something like 180 along the road. We counted 159 that day, many old and rusty, most upside-down, almost all burnt out, mainly well off the road reservation – but with an occasional shiny wreck, although still totally trashed, every window broken, wheels removed, etc. Of course, if we were counting the many thousands of wheels, tyres, hub-caps, bumpers, mufflers and other car parts strewn along the roadside, they could probably be cobbled together to increase our count tenfold. And if we were counting the persistent plague of flies that harassed us almost constantly, they may well have run into the millions!!!
On the day, we saw one snake curled up in the middle of the road (and a few dead ones), a fox(?) that trotted along near the road, seemingly unconcerned by us (Heather thought it was a dingo and she may well have been right because it didn’t look all that much like either species), and a few camels – one group of at least ten and a few other loners. There were a few birds, but there were long stretches without seeing a single bird, followed by areas where we saw several within a kilometre or so – but nothing identifiable that we had not seen earlier in the trip.
Our fourth successive 44-degree day but it was not too bad in the car with the A/C running on high. We drove 464 kms on the day and counted 190 wrecked cars. By ‘cars’ I mean ‘vehicles’ because there was a very occasional truck, or a caravan, a trailer, even one lonely motorbike set up vertically beside the track.
We stopped at Warburton for fuel (and a bucket of yummy chips). We expected it to be a bit of a challenge with a raft of rules specified on our travel permit but it all went smoothly. Diesel was $2.45 a litre and petrol was $2.50. We needed petrol for the generator and it is illegal to carry ordinary unleaded fuel out there due to the petrol-sniffing pandemic. You can only use Opel fuel and it is hard to find but we filled a couple of small jerrycans there and were soon on our way again. The Roadhouses are well away from the aboriginal communities and are forlorn and desolate places with just a couple of locals hanging out, usually in a dilapidated wreck of a car that will soon join the others along the roadside. We drove past one place to get to the roadhouse where I reckon there were at least 70 wrecks littering a small paddock. We never added them to our tally, but there were a couple of tumbledown sheds there that could easily have been hiding another hundred wrecks, either inside or behind.
One important place we stopped was at the junction of the Heather Highway, just a couple of clicks short of Warburton. The Heather Highway is another of Len Beadell’s great outback roads and it runs through the Gibson Desert. And given that my Heather is nee Gibson, driving at least a few kilometres on the Heather Highway in the Gibson Desert was quite a priority – something she has been wanting to do for at least a decade. We drove a few clicks up the highway before turning back to refuel at Warburton. Needless to say, that day’s Happy Hour included some celebratory bubbles.
We stopped at a couple of jump-ups and even went for a walk at one of them where I saw quite a few interesting birds, but it was simply too hot to chase them very far trying to get some photos.
The drive itself was never boring - but then, I simply can’t remember a drive that was. If I open my mind and simply observe what is passing me by, there is always more than enough to fascinate me.
I have fallen in love with the desert oaks again. They are so different as they age, starting with a straggly post with an unruly scattering of leaves, through to the mature tree with its cascades of drooping foliage, thick enough to provide shade and visual beauty but sparse enough to let one see the wonderfully elaborate structure of the trunk and boughs that support the lesser branches, twigs and leaves. Quite beautiful and we have seen thousands of them standing majestically across the landscape.
We drove through dune after dune, mainly rich reds and oranges but often in a strange fishbone pattern, running at an angle to each other and converging where the road cuts through. Very strange and I can’t hazard a guess as to how they developed, but they are certainly thought provoking. There were also dramatic rocky mountain ridges along the road or across it, forming a natural barrier to direct rivers and creeks (mainly dry just now), forcing them into runnels that might otherwise defy gravity.
We stopped and started many times along the way, attempting to find and explore every feature mentioned in the various printed and electronic resources we carried. Unfortunately, these references were often misleading, quoting distances that are wildly inaccurate and we were unable to find quite a few of them - or we found them by accident many kilometres from their recorded positions. We found quite a few, but maybe we need another trip at a later, cooler, time to explore numerous others.
We had intended staying overnight at Warakurna, but when we arrived, we couldn’t raise anyone. We left a couple of phone messages, but nobody ever rang us back so we decided to keep on driving to a suitable roadside camp. We eventually set up at a bush clearing called Camels’ Last Resort, just a couple of gravel loops a couple of hundred metres off the main track and there were even a few birds around to sing to us. It stayed very hot overnight and neither of us had much sleep that night.
We were hit by the cold snap today – only 42 degrees with the promise of a crash to a frigid 38 tomorrow!
A couple of kilometres from our overnight camp, the road was closed and the cops were in attendance checking border passes and vaccination certificates – but only for people entering Western Australia, not escapees like us. We chatted with them for a few minutes and they opened the road and waved us through. A couple of hundred metres further on, some aboriginals were changing a wheel in the middle of the road, but we drove around them and went on our way. Five or six kilometres further on, we realised that we had missed one of the memorials we had wanted to see so drove back almost to the cops until we found a very narrow track a couple of kilometres into the bush where there was one of Len Beadell’s original marker plaques attached to the stump of an old tree. I have talked about Len a couple of times before and he is/was one of the great outback engineering icons and we wanted to see this plaque – as well as another one we saw a couple of hundred kilometres further along on the same day. We could have continued along the side-track that looped back to the main road, but that would have involved another discussion with the cops so we did a U-turn in the space available and shunted back to the main road and continued east.
We detoured to Lasseter’s Cave a little later and ate our lunch there. Lasseter sheltered in this cave for some days before making his final fateful flight for civilisation with the help of some aboriginals, but he died in the attempt after about three weeks of desert walking. The cave is beside a river and there were still a few areas of water there and hundreds of birds. We saw Little Corellas, Budgerigars, White-necked and White-faced Herons, Diamond Doves and quite a few more - with both the Doves and Budgies in squads of at least a few hundred.
We had encountered a couple of quite short bitumen strips, but as we approached the end of the gravel, we started seeing bigger rocks and hills until we were driving on the blacktop with the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) growing large in our field of view. They are so much more impressive to both of us than Uluru that is just a big boring lump of rock with little to recommend it. The Olgas (and Mount Connor that we will pass tomorrow) are so much more interesting than Uluru.
We saw only 32 wrecks in the 376 kilometres we drove that day and it was noticeable that the further we drove east, the less wrecks we encountered. And road traffic was also lighter – we only saw three other cars that day.
We really don’t much like the Rock and Yulara is just as bad, but we wanted to stay there so we could have showers and run the air conditioner for a bit of cool comfort in the van. We were the only van in the big caravan park and we certainly had cool showers, but when we turned the air conditioner on, nothing happened. It was dead and we couldn’t see any reason for it so decided on the spot that we would have to recast our plans yet again and detour to Alice Springs to try to have it repaired. Another very hot and uncomfortable sleepless night.
Heather has also been complaining that our tank water smells so detouring to Alice Springs will also afford the opportunity of draining our tanks and refilling them with fresh water.
We rang a couple of places in the Alice and found a company that was willing to look at our air conditioning problem so we packed up ready to head to the big smoke again – until I noticed that one of our caravan tyres was nearly flat – the eighth wheel we have had to change this trip, five on the car and three on the van. I got stuck straight into it and with a little help from Heather, we soon had the spare wheel on and were (again) ready to leave. At least, changing a wheel on the van is easier than changing one on the car.
We were the only van in the big park, but I had seen a couple of cars drive through and out at the far end of the camping area so we set off in that direction looking for an Exit sign. There was none so we had to guess where to go and clearly, we guessed wrong. We eventually ended up on a sandy fire track skirting the luxury hotel and were then confronted with a securely locked gate with no possibility of turning around or reversing back out to any other similarly unmarked track. A guy coming out of a nearby building saw our predicament and eventually drove Heather to the Security Centre where a couple of guys drove her back to unlock the gate to let us out. Alas, someone had changed the padlock so the security guys’ keys didn’t fit (a local turf war was said to be the issue about changing padlocks with both parties attempting to keep their rivals out of their territory). They had to go back to their workshop to collect some bolt-cutters to remove the chain and release us. One of the guys was a huge Maori guy and it took all his strength on the end of a 1.5 metre pair of bolt-cutters to set us free. The guys were both really wonderful about it all and just couldn’t do enough fast enough to help. They were great – and we were finally wending our way through the Yulara labyrinth to the main road and on to Erldunda 350 kilometres away.
For the record, we saw only 3 wrecks between Yulara and Erldunda and 3 more through to Alice Springs. Obviously, the further one goes west, the less concerned people are about abandoning their cars in the desert.
I calculated that we could get to Erldunda without needing to buy fuel in Yulara, but we chewed through more than expected so about 15 kilometres shy of Erldunda, I emptied two of our jerrycans of fuel into the tank. I am sure it wasn’t necessary, but I like to turn the jerrycan fuel over before it sits too long unused – and although I tried not to put too much into the tanks at the expensive Erldunda prices, I reckon we still had about 300 kilometres of fuel in the tanks when we reached the Alice.
Erldunda completed our journey of the full length of the Outback Way this trip – we did the eastern half a few months ago. In retrospect, it is clear that one should ignore the scaremongering of the overly-conservative pussycats about road conditions. The western half of the track holds very few fears for even a moderately experienced driver. Two-wheel drives would be completely capable of making the crossing, even with a van or trailer behind them. Obviously, one must be careful and drive to the conditions, but it was only a mildly challenging track. Sure, conditions can change quickly after rain, but we both reckon several of the other roads we have driven this trip (including the eastern half of the Outback Way) were much more challenging (but no more rewarding) than this one.
Then it was another 200 kilometres of excellent bitumen north to Alice Springs and we booked in at the G’Day Holiday Park where we have stayed numerous times before – this was our fourth visit this trip so they know us pretty well by now. Given that the air conditioner in the van was not working and we were pretty buggered after the long hot dusty trip and the morning’s ordeal with the tyre, we decided to invest in a cabin for a couple of nights before setting off on our next little challenge.
