Hitting The Dirt

 

Wednesday 20 July 2022 – Hitting the dirt

As it was a more leisurely start it was a cooked breakfast morning with a yummy bacon and egg sandwich.  A short drive into Laverton where we visited the visitor centre dump point and toilets (surprisingly clean) and then filled up with fuel and another loaf of bread at the service station/roadhouse/supermarket/centre of town.

Turned onto the Great Central Road and after about 52km we hit the road and felt a bit like the adventure had really begun.  We stopped at Giles Breakaway (also known as Bubbles Rockhole) for a morning tea stop.  The Great Desert Road map book describes this as ‘a spectacular valley of colourful cliffs’.  Well, there was a small rocky ledge that was yellow and white and was slightly underwhelming but it actually looks quite spekky in the photos so there you go.  We chatted to some people who had come from the other direction.  They were quite ecstatic to be close to the bitumen which suggests we may be in for some bumpy bits of roads.  One couple had done in it in a roof top tent.  Her words?  Never again!

                                            

We trundled on for another hour of so at a rest stop named, somewhat creatively, The Pines for a quick dust check.  There was a little bit dust around the door which was a little disappointing but none in any of the internal cupboards that had previously been a problem so we may invest in a bit more rubber stripping in Alice Springs for the door and hopefully that helps.

Drove on for another hour or so.  We kept our eyes scanned for camels as instructed by our map book but the countryside was completely desolate – no fauna of any kind to be found.  We called into a convenient rest stop for a quick lunch stop as it was not a particularly attractive although we were impressed that someone had gone to the effort of actually digging a big hole for their car wreck.  Actually for every camel we haven’t seen we have seen 50 car wrecks.  A lot of them are just abandoned but some people get creative and balance them one of top of another, or on their noses or paint colours on the side.

We had another little stop just up the road at the next rest stop so H&M could fix a rattling of bottles in the back of their car and stumbled across the two MDC camper trailers.  We gave them a friendly wave as were a distance from them and wondered when and if we would next see them.

Our last stop for the day was at the Beegull waterholes which is also the site of a white cross erected by the nearby Indigenous Christians and some small caves with some rock paintings.  Our watches were very happy that we finally did some steps as we climbed to the top of the rocky outcrop to check out the (dry) waterholes and to get a good view of the GCR heading off into the distance with the occasional dust cloud showing the location of another trepid traveller.

We made our overnight stop at Nullye soak about 4pm,  set up camp and got the fire going.  Larry made dinner whilst Jenny did a few days worth of blogging thanks to a loan of Hendrik’s laptop.  A very yummy chicken, mushroom and bacon casserole done in the camp oven went down a treat.  You always know it’s a winner when there are no leftovers!  We sat and digested whilst we stared at the fire and then decided the coals were too good not to doing something with and decided we would use some of the apples we need to eat before the border by making baked apples in the coals.  Just as we were cutting up apples and giant gurgling sound came from nearby.  Considering we are staying at somewhere with ‘Soak’ in the name I first thought that something was gurgling up from the ground but Hendrik and Larry assured us that it was only a camel close by but completely invisible in the pitch dark surrounds outside of the glow of the campfire.  Larry went a grabbed his high powered torch and we spotted one ghostly looking camel wandering along about 100m away or so.  It certainly had sounded closer when it gurgled though!

We ate our yummy apple dessert with a few glances over the shoulder just in case a camel wanted to creep up on us whilst we weren’t looking but we survived the evening and after watching the stars for a bit longer it was time for bed.