Thursday 17th July
Bush Camp – middle of nowhere
22°13'21.85"S, 121°49'16.14"E
Today was a day the had the best and worst of everything. It’s left us satisfied but exhausted and we are deep in the bush north of the Park and our destination, the Yandagooge Gap.
I was up early to start the pack-up. It seems as everyone else was leaving as well. All of a sudden our campsite was empty.
Now that's a stake and a stuffed tyre!
We hit the road at 9.30 and had only gone 800 metres when I heard the tell tale sound of air escaping a tyre at a rapid rate. Id managed to stake a trailer tyre on a sharp turn. Tyre unserviceable and side wall ripped completely. A tube for this one. Another Kilometre or two down the track and the gash in the right rear tyre that had been plugged so effectively, spat the plugs. We plugged again
A meeting on the QDB - John, Alan, Scott and Mick
to no avail. It was a slow leak only so we drove on. A few short km later and I ran into Alan McCall and his father John heading in to DQB. We stopped and chatted for an hour over his success in locating Patience Well and other landmarks from Carnegies Journey.
On the road again and only got a further 2 km before the rear tyre spat the second set of plugs. Nothing for it but a laborious tyre change for near on an hour and some improvisation to mount the alloy wheel on the rear carrier. Scott had to file the threads out of two nuts to act as spacers due to the deep wheel nut recesses on the wheel. We were finally on the way again about 12:30 and still only half way to the turnoff.
The high cave in the southern Broadhurst Range
We reached the main track without further incident and headed north. Our tracks at “Claypan” had almost disappeared as we passed, not surprising considering the soft conditions and the wind. I called in at the top water pump to find a major survey camp set up there. They had disconnected the hand pump and dropped a poly pipe down the
bore effectively preventing anyone else from drawing water from the
bore.
We headed on past the Coolbro Creek and its waterholes where Johnno and I camped in 2006. Once again the area was ravaged by fire and
bore no resemblance to my memories of the area. I didn’t check to see if the waterholes still contained any water. A few kilometers later,
A legthy pitstop amongst the devestation - Changing the rear wheel
I located the short graded line that runs North West off the main road about 8 kilometres short of Moses Chair. I was running on memory here but we followed the track in for some 20 km. The first ten of which was in a general direction that could only be described as away from our destination. The graded line was soft and in many places, overgrown with scrub. At its end we struck the sand hills I remembered vividly from my earlier visit 2 years previously. The shifting sand had covered much of the track and you could see that it obliterated our vehicle tracks almost as soon as wed crossed
No way forward, no way back!
the area. Despite this, the track was often in very good condition but I did a lot of stopping and starting, getting out of the vehicle to remove dead timber and other tyre endangering obstacles (camel bones). Once it cleared the low ranges and hit the sand hills again, the track veered back round to a bearing that pointed us towards our junction. There were several sandy, washed out creek crossings to be negotiated but all in all a very enjoyable drive. On reaching our junction, the track left had not been used in many years and was completely overgrown. The camels had left a bit of a path so we headed off at a very slow, stake and scrub conscious speed. It wasn’t long before we began paralleling low rocky ranges, the precursors of the Throssells. Three kilometers or so in, the dreaded radio message was received once again, Scott had punctured a trailer tyre resulting in another quick wheel change.
It was getting late now but we pushed on. There were often low, thick grevillea type gorse that we were forced to push through. Scotty radioed me that I was
Our track has become a creek
dragging a stick underneath and on inspection, we found that the shrubs had raked two vacuum hoses from their pipes. Thankfully the clamps were still attached to the tubing so Scott squeezed under and reattached, hopefully in the right order. Some 12 kilometers and 2 hours along the track, I spied a lone stand of guns in the distance in a gap between two ranges and decreed that to be our camp for the night. It appeared, and should have been a straight forward run of a kilometer to our intended destination, but it was not to be. Our track suddenly became a dry creek bed and then a
Time to dig our way out.
wash-away with steep cut sides of 1.4 to two metres in height and getting narrower as we moved forward. Nature and the cyclonic precipitation that this region experiences at work.
Rather than attempt the near impossible feat of backing down the gorge, I called a halt before the sides became so confining as to prevent even that maneuver. Not
being able to turn around, we were forced to dig away an edge collapsing it as best we could into the stream bed to form a ramp of loose sand. I hoped we could then climb out onto the high ground. It took a couple of takes on the leaders behalf and a bit more shoveling before we were both safely on high ground in the fast fading light. Scotty hit it hard in second gear and both Gabby and I thought he might actually be tipping over but the high roof of the troopy made it deceptive and he got up with a minimum of fuss, all ably captured on video by Gaby.
Camp and that amazing moon
Finally out we moved the couple of hundred metres to the stand of trees and set up camp under the gums, against a low range of hills to our north east. A couple of local dingoes greeted us and the evening with their mournful howls. All totally exhausted and being nearly dark there appeared to be a paucity of accessible firewood. Still the old rope and shifter trick provided a few dead branches that saw us warm through the evening. A big stodgy meal of meatballs and pasta for dinner. A very early night as we are spent. I’m typing this from bed the next morning. During the early hours of the morning I heard the strange call of the night bird that had so fascinated me out on the Canning.
Go to the next day - Day 2