Submitted: Friday, Jul 04, 2008 at 00:00

Friday 4th July
Spinifex Camp Approx 2km north east of Burrabudingu Soak,
Little Sandy Desert WA
24 14 34.22 S, 123 26 14.77 E
(NOTE: All hyperlinks go to Exploroz "places" descriptions)


It was another draining day in the wilds today with 5 punctures, (3 to me and 2 to Scott), and some novel tyre repairs using superglue and gaffer tape. I was up before the sun and packed away before breakfast. I walked down to the Unnamed Rockhole to investigate yesterday’s handiwork at the rockhole and took some photos and video. I took appropriate GPS co-ordinates and marked the big rock hole with a small cairn on the western bank of the creek.

After breakfast Scott was completing the repairs to his badly torn sidewall on the Duelers. It was a jagged ‘M’ shaped gash about 15cm in total length. A very ugly wound indeed. We’d left our stitching wire back in Melbourne and all we could put our hands on that was big enough was a light weight patch of what looked like lilo (airbed) rubber. Itd do. We decided to weld the edges of the tear back together with supa-glue and when that had set, pushed all the little protrusions inside back into to some semblance of order and cemented them from the inside. Next, it was gluing the flimsy patch to the inside of the sidewall. We were worried that the patch would not offer enough protection for the tube so decided that the judicious application of gaffer tape across the patch would lend some additional protection to the tube. Innovation at it’s best. It certainly looked good! It was destined to be “the spare of last resort”!

We headed off across the rocky range and into the scrub. There was no track to speak of, it having disappeared pretty quickly. It was slow going over tough terrain winding in and out of the rocky gullies and creeks. On an approach to one rocky embankment Scott radioed me that I had staked a trailer tyre. Had I what! He wasn’t kidding. A 30 cm shard of timber protruding from high in the side wall of the drivers side trailer tyre. After patching and inflating it I moved on across the creek only to have Scott stop me again as hed just staked a trailer tyre in the same place. Did he ever! Hed managed to punch a huge stick right through the sidewall ruining both tyre and tube. Hes down to one serviceable spare now.

We pushed on finally breaking out of the hill country and into the sand hill country again. On occasion we’d come across the faint remnants of a track but this was often lost once we hit any rocky ground. I pushed on regardless often coming back across the track fleetingly. About noon Scott punctured a second tyre on the trailer with a side wall stake, thankfully a small one this time. We called a halt to proceedings while both tyres and tubes were repaired. I set up the awning to provide Scott some shade and I largely supervised the splitting of the rims and then helped with the tyre casing patching and repair. Super glue seems to assist in holding the sidewall rubber well. Whether it’s flexible enough to handle the rigors of off road travel and low pressures remains to be seen. While Scott laboured and I supervised, chef Gaby provided lunch.

We were back on our way (I can’t say track because there wasn’t one) after two and made good time a cross an area of recently burnt out scrub. This soon came to an end though as we hit a rocky area with deep cut washaways. I had to track south along the meandering gully until I finally found a place to cross. As fate would have it I managed to roll a trailer tyre off the rim…great. On went one of the new Dick Sipek FC2’s and once again commenced pushing slowly towards Birrell rockhole.

A fright late in the day when the trailer tyre started going down again. Getting out the trusty spray bottle of soapy water, we identified a leak right on the rim. Jacking up the trailer, we deflated the tyre and located and removed a 25mm piece of spinifex which had penetrated between the tyre and rim. This seemed to solve the problem and after pumping the tyre up we were on the way once again. It was 4:30 p.m. by this time and we were still in the wilds of the spinifex country traversing along a large swale. Using the Natmap was crucial here as you had to pick exactly the right swales to enter lest you find yourself trapped when two sand hills converged. It was apparent that we weren’t going to locate Birrell Rockhole this day and that a night in the spinifex seemed inevitable. Spying some dead mulga in the distance we headed for that and stopped there. Everyone is exhausted. We covered 35 km in total for the day after 8 hours of travel and 2 hours spent static for repairs. We managed to clear enough spinifex to safely have a fire and the mulga ensured at least a decent sort of fire.

Managed a fire and I was feeling manky so used some water for a sponge shower. Feel a bit better after that. It’s 8.25 and all are in bed. The sunset was spectacular with just a sliver of a moon setting late. I tried to capture it with a few photos. Tomorrow we might reach Birrell and hopefully a track of some description. Not this nebulous ghost of a track we stumble across on all to fleeting occasions.

Tags: 4WD, Camping, GPS/Navigation, Places/Destinations, Travel Journal, Tyres
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