Wednesday 13th August – Departing Newhaven 6c – 26c chilly wind

Newhaven to Rabbit Flat

Early pack up for us, we need to get to Yuendumu before 1pm for refuelling, as they close for lunch.

It went down to 6c overnight and was still only 13c at 11am, but it warmed up to 26c this afternoon.  There was a chilly wind blowing. Guess who decided yesterday to pack away most of the cold weather clothing because for five days we had warm weather?  At least we left out a couple of jackets.

We had a full pack up to do including the annex and woke at 7am had breakfast and packed up and were on the road by 9am – the same time as Rosemary & Kieran in their OZ tent, so we think we did okay.

We were a few minutes behind them and had a close encounter with a young and very very large bull.  He was eating grass beside the road hidden by the mulga and we scared him and us.  Just spotted him in time to pull up.

We took the short cut road to Yuendumu which saved us at least 200 klm. It was a great road, nice and sandy and smooth to drive on.

We saw our first wild camel !

 After all of the desert trips we have done, we have never seen wild camels.  We had just finished discussing whether we would ever see one, when right on the road in front of us was this one.  Looking very lean.

 

 

 

We got to Yuendumu at 11am and all I can say it was like arriving at the tip minus the ibis.  No photos allowed, I wonder why?

Fuel was $2.40 a litre, cash only no eftpos, captive market.  We were back on the road within half hour, nothing to hang around there for.

   

These lovely flowers were growing in a crack in the rocks.

 

We stopped here for lunch, the rocks were like others we have seen called onion peel, as they break down in layers.

It was a great spot out of that chilly wind.

 

 

 

How good is this road? It’s supposed to be really really bad.

 

 

 

There must have been a million of these mounds, they went for as far as you could see.  It’s disappointing that you can’t capture what it looks like in a photo. After a while these stopped and there were only a few in the surrounding area.

 

 

The mounds started again not quite as many but much much bigger.

 

Saying that, there were thousands of these.

The termites at Newhaven live below ground and cover huge areas, hundreds of acres.  You occasionally see small low round mounds or covered tracks across the ground.  They eat spinifex and store it in case of fire. 

 

 

 

 

 

Well look at that, the tar!   We are in short lived heaven.

 

 

 

We headed off on the Tanami Rd and it was just lovely cruising for 214 klms and then we found out why, we met the grader gang, so knew that this joy was going to run out.

 

There were five graders in total, we started to hope that they were grading from Halls Creek and not to Halls Creek.

Bad luck, after 214 klms we were out of smooth road.

Now we are down to half graded road, rats. When we ran out of graded road, we hit a rough patch for about 20 km and from then on it was corrugations but only mid range and basically really not too bad.  We did about 60 km hour in the rough and on the good 80 km hour.   

We drove past Granite Gold Mine, with stern warnings of no entry.  There were a huge number of birds (looked like crows or ravens) circling over an area we couldn’t see into, probably their tip.  They have an airport, so no rough roads for them, fly in, fly out.

We are camped a few kilometres from Rabbit Flat.  The road house has closed down now and there is no facilities.  You need to be well fuelled up for this trip as there are a lot of kilometres to travel with no fuel outlets. 

Off the road behind some shrubbery, someone else has also pulled up and is camped nearby.