David Carnegie Road/Eagle Hwy

There is really not much to write about on these two tracks. They had a lot less corrugations on them though!! We climbed down the opening via a steel rope ladder into Empress Spring along the way, and found it to be bone dry. Someone had written in the visitors book about the presence of a snake down there but we did not see it.

The country side has some low hills and the scrub is mainly Mulga, Spinifex(what else!) other grasses and Grevillea and although very little rain had fallen since Januray the colours of the Gibson Desert were phenomenal.

We met a few cheeky camels along the way who persisted in running in front of the vehicles at 15kmh. When I had had enough I accellerated and got up alongside one and then they scattered off into the spinifex.

Stopping for lunch on a rocky rise I found a jerry can with MOWER written on and it had nothing wrong with it and now adorns the mower shed at my place.

At the Gunbarrell Highway we stopped for a break and the road looked like it had been graded recently. Mungilli Outstation are just ruins of another idea to house bush people in the outback. Sooner or later they up and leave it all behind. Others come after them and pilfer what they can carry away.

There are a few washouts along the Eagle Highway but nothing too extreme. In some places 5th gear was possible at 80kmh only to be brought back to reality when a 5kmh washout appeared. We met for the second time an old bloke in a Cruiser, travelling on his own seemingly to nowhere. We camped at Eagle Hussar Airfield for one night sand then pushed on to the Warri and Yutanga site at the Karrinarri Claypan. Warri and Yutanga were the very last nomadic aborigines to come out of the desert and settle in civilisation(Wiluna). This happened in 1977. This was at their own request. Later a lean-to was built and a bore was put in close to the Karrinarri Claypan but it soon too was abandoned. I managed to get some water out of the tank to replenish our dwindeling stocks. The windmill is no longer working and the water in the tank was rainwater.