Canning Stock Route via Sandy Blight Junction and home via the Simpson

Blog 4

This is 4 July 2009, and we are sitting at the base of the Sir Frederick Range in the WA section of the Sandy Blight Junction Road. Before me is a wide, stony valley the floor of which is scattered with a variety of young wildflowers and numerous burnt trees. Some of the blue mallee are regrowing and the scene should be beautiful in a year or so. Despite being at the base of the mountain, we are on a rise and can see a long way to distant hills far off in the NT. We feel quite remote although with company there is not the same sense of risk that we’ve felt in other places at other times. I’m thinking particularly of a night we spent in Graphite Valley in the Rudall River National Park – that was spooky for me mainly because it was clear that the track was rarely used and extremely rough.

The Landcruiser has climbed to the trig station and Kevin reckons it’s the hardest work the car has done. Kevin had LC in low range with the air lockers on however the masses of big round boulders made traction extremely difficult. I’m told that the view has potential but with the weather overcast, whilst vast, it was not spectacular. Our friends sensibly decided not to subject their Pajero to the climb but still managed to have the bad luck of ruining a tyre on the mountain somehow. They were disappointed that their device to show tyre pressure (a “tyre dog”?) from inside the vehicle didn’t advise them that they had a flat.


Since I last wrote, we have been west along the track variously called the Gary Junction Road and the Gary Highway. Whatever its name, it is long and we found it to be a fine dirt road that gets quite a bit of use by people travelling between Papunya and Kintore. We then travelled past the beginning of the Sandy Blight Junction Road to the main road entry to Kintore. I hadn’t organised to see artists at work there as their work goes to Alice for sale along with work from Kiwikurra. Our friends bought Opal fuel there – they paid $20 for the bowser to opened and paid around $1.66 per litre. Not bad, we thought.

Kintore is located on the northern side of the spectacular Mt Leisler. Due to its distinct shape, we noticed this mountain frequently throughout the afternoon. We then saw it from the south a couple of times the next day. I guess the general flatness of the landscape makes the mountain and the range it is part of significant from quite a distance.


We camped south of Kintore on the Sandy Blight Junction Road near a Len Beadell marker that referred to the tree marked by Tietkens (sp?) in the middle of the C19. As our camp was under Mt Leisler, I did some drawing and Kevin took heaps of photos. There was a glorious sunrise. A small pink gecko appeared under one of the tents in the morning and we took more photos!

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