2008 Outback WA & NT - Day 4 Wednesday July 30th

Awoke at 5:45 am with the generator at Carnegie. Coffee first as always and then the pack up. Tracy woke up feeling worse than the previous day with a flu. The kids spent a good part of the morning riding around in the back of a little Suzuki being driven around by the station manager’s 9 year old daughter emptying the rubbish bins. We had toast for breakfast, quick and easy, using the new toaster thingy that Tracy had purchased before we left for $30.

After finishing the pack up we found one of the French guys (Claude) and purchased our car stickers, hat pin and postcard, along with some bread and another box of tissues for Tracy.

We drove to car over to fuel up at $2.60 litre (the most expensive on the trip). We only needed 50 litres, so our run from Wiluna was quite efficient.

After filling we went to visit Lee, the station manager to ask her to sign a release form to allow us to use the video we had shot of her kids driving our kids around for commercial purposes if we do decide to go that way. We chatted for about 15 minutes, got the bread and headed off to begin the Gunbarrel proper.



For the first 170 kms we made good time, sitting on about 75 kms / hour on a nicely graded road maintained by the Wiluna shire. We drove past a sign telling us that we were leaving Wiluna shire and not more than 500 meters past the sign, the road deteriorated into what could only be described as a real goat track. For the next 40 or so kms, we travelled at an average speed of about 14 kms / hour on some of the worst corrugations I have ever driven on. We had heard of some people driving these corrugations doing up around 50 kms / hour, but I would rather take a little longer and look after the truck.



We arrived at Geraldton Bore at around 3:45, which was our planned camp for the night. We had beautiful fresh water from the bore pump and had the place totally to ourselves. We searched around for some firewood, not too much to be found, but we did manage to find enough so that we could have a small camp fire.



Tracy is still feeling pretty miserable, and dosing up on various drugs and wine. I cooked a nice hot vindaloo curry for dinner, extremely hot, which should hopefully do the job of clearing her sinuses.



We were unable to get through to VKS tonight to check in, so will call first thing in the morning before we head off. It’s a quite beautiful night out here tonight. Solitude, quite with just the sounds of the desert night and the various creatures living out here. I must try to finish Len Beadell’s book on the building of this road.

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Cheers Richard VKS737 - Mobile 1912 Selcall 1912 Member: My Profile  My Blog  Send Message