What happened to day 5??   Aah yes; we had an issue. I keep saying that the gods laugh at the best laid plans of mice and men. When I got up on day 5, I could not unlock the driver’s door on my Patrol. I also found that the rear door on the same side did not open either. I had to get in from the passenger side to shuffle to the driver seat to start up my car. Needless to say, I could not do thousands of kilometers like that.

I did some serious begging with the local Nissan dealer to get my 4WD booked in for a service that day. It turned out that an overload of dust had stopped the locking mechanism from working. After a good clean and some oil the doors were as good as gold once more.

So I left early on day 6 to head north of Alice on the Stuart highway to head for the Tanami track. 20 kilometers north of Alice I reached the turn off heading northwest through the Tanami desert towards Broome. This is the shortest road to Broome from the southeast of the country.

The Tanami track is just around 1100 kilometers long and is mostly unsealed and in average to poor condition of corrugation. The distance from Alice to Broome is just shy of 2000 kilometers. The track has been improving over the years because of the mining development along this area. As a result the road looks like a ‘W’ with a raised middle section bordered by a culvert on both sides that catches the water if and when it rains. That water is then diverted at drainage points. If it is wet and you end up in the mud in a culvert it is game over. You are not going anywhere in a hurry.

The tricky bit is that the trucks that carry the ore from the mines come in the shape of road trains with 3 or 4 trailers. The total thing is over 100 tons on the move and it is not able to move off the center of the road as the gradient would cause the train to roll over. So one plays chicken with the road train and eventually you get the message to pull off the road and wait for the monster to pass. These trains kick up so much bulldust that you are not able to move until the dust has settled a few minutes later.

The corrugations at times are so bad that you are not able to drive faster than 50 kilometers an hour. Once again the scenery along the road is stunning with many trees, grassy flat areas and dry countryside in other places. You are travelling through the Tanami desert. However the land does not look like a typical desert. There is a good deal of vegetation around. The other thing one notices is that there are very many, very large termite hills all over the place. I love their color which is a rich ochre and looks grand in the setting sun.  The backdrop to the landscape is one of long hills and mountain ranges. Once again this is not a flat country.

By now the sun was getting lower and I had done less than 500 kilometers. The road conditions made it impossible to travel at any decent speed. In looking for an ideal camping spot I had noticed during the day that at every 50 kilometers along the track there was a microwave repeater station/mast. The spots were some 50 meters away from the road and had a cleared area around the masts. There was evidence of fires where travelers have used these spots for overnighting. This seemed like a gift to me and I pulled over at one of them and set up camp for the evening.  I put down my swag  at the rear of  the car and set up the requirements like table, chair, gas for cooking and collected some fire wood.

A good meal and a beer  later I turned in for the night and went to sleep. A while later, it must have been around 1:00am, I was woken up by the strangest noise: grrrcunch, grrcrunch, silence, then again grrcrunch. I gently lifted my head without making any noise and saw a dingo in the moonlight, not 30 meters away from me eating a small animal that he had caught and killed. As I lifted my head my sleeping bag made a slight noise which caused the dingo to look at me and disappeared amongst the grasses. I went back to sleep until daybreak.

These little fellas are everywhere

I find the Yorke peninsula staggering at this time of the year. Wherever you drive, as far as the eye can see, you see grain fields. It is beautiful; fields of Barley, Wheat, Pulses and Green fertilizers that get ploughed straight back into the paddock, no wonder they call this Australia’s food basket. I cannot express things better than the link below. There you will find all the facts and pictures for this area. The link takes you to one of the main pages. Explore the many fantastic links from there.

http://www.harvestcorner.com.au/#!farming/c84j

After an hour of driving through cropping farms we arrived in Moonta. The town has a central park with a generous grassy area and many shady old Fig trees and public facilities. This is a reasonable size centre which proudly displays its rich copper mining heritage in the many well maintained churches, official buildings and miner’s cottages.

Great architecture

Moonta square

School of Mines

Miner’s cottage

The history is proudly displayed also in an artist’s contribution in the form of a collection of mining related sketches that include a picture of Elizabeth Woolcock, the only woman to be executed ever in South Australia. See pic below:

Artists sketches of mining

Elizabeth Woolcock

An internet search will reveal the following in Wikipedia:

Elizabeth Woolcock (20 April 1848 – 30 December 1873) was born Elizabeth Lillian Oliver in Burra Burra and was hanged in Adelaide Gaol for the murder of her husband Thomas Wollcock by mercury poisoning.

As one drives through the suburbs of Moonta one arrives in Moonta bay. The large jetty here is well known for being a good fishing and squidding spot. Just down the road is Port Hughes, another lovely coastal gem that is expanding rapidly.

Massive Jetty at Moonta Bay

From there we drove through an increasingly arid landscape to the port of Wallaroo. I found the shipping terminal with its massive ship loading infrastructure fascinating. Wallaroo is also a base for the trawling fleet and if you like boats you will enjoy having a look at the trawlers there.

Kadina has the ‘larger town’ feel as you drive through the light industry areas leading into the town. It is a great town with good public facilities and we went for a walk and stretched our legs before we made our way back to Port Vincent. There we spent a pleasant afternoon on the beach  swimming the dogs and soaking up the tranquility.

Port Vincent – even the fish like it!

Point Turton Caravan Park

Point Turton Tavern

Point Turton boat launch

Seascape

The following day we explored the foot of the Yorke Peninsula. We drove to Corny Point in the west and from there 5km along a good gravel road to the Corny Point lighthouse. It is in a great position at the north-west of the foot. There is a good swell running and in contrast to the flat bay it has a reasonable depth of water and rocks. There should be some good rock fishing to be had.

Dune flowers above the sea at Corny Point

Old Schoolhouse from the 1850s

Seascape at Corny Point

We then drove through a number of great little towns like Marion Bay, Yorktown, Edithburgh, Stansbury and Port Vincent, all of them charming. Back at Point Turton I did some fishing on the pier and ended up with some squid that I have frozen and will use as bait for some fishing later in this trip.

Point Turton Pier

Outback Rest area

Reminder of how easily Skids happen on gravel roads

This place (Mungo) is World Heritage listed as being the oldest burial place of modern human man outside Africa. Mungo man walked the shores of Mungo Lake before man roamed Europe. The remains of several skeletons have been radio carbon dated at 41000 years ago. This includes the now famous Mungo Man and Mungo Lady. It was special for me to have our aboriginal tour guide speak to us about the customs and survival skills of his ancestors. Some of these skills and practises have survived to this day and had been passed on from one generation to the next. The trip back to Mildura happened faster that I had expected.

Sunrise over Lake Mungo

Lake Mungo centre

Back in Mildura, after mucking about at and in the river we decided to find some pizza in town. Boy did we find a great pizza place. At the Grand Hotel they have the Pizza Café that simply makes the best pizza I have eaten for many a year. They have a few great local brews as well.