143. Day 90 – We head east onto the red dirt roads

Thursday 24 July 2008

Just before we left Carnarvon a huge three trailer road train pulled into the garage next to us. The young driver told us that he carts Ammonium Nitrate (which is used in explosives) from Perth up to the mines in the Pilbara. The truck and trailers had sixteen axles with 62 tyresand weighed 120 tonnes when carrying 80 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate.

We topped up the water tanks and drove a short distance up the North West Coast Highway before turning off onto the Mullewa Road and heading towards Gascoyne Junction. We drove on a dirt road, but not for long as 80kms from Gascoyne Junction we travelled on good bitumen.

**The road crossed a few red sandhills**

The scenery was magnificent with the rich red earth, reminding us that we were truly in outback Australia.

We stopped in Gascoyne Junction and read the very good information signs. In 1924 Charles Kingsford-Smith and Keith Anderson bought a truck and started the Gascoyne Transport Company taking the mail from Carnarvon to the Bangemall goldfields near Mt Augustus. We drove along some of this route with signs marking the way.

Soon after leaving Gascoyne Junction we passed a convoy of six caravans travelling west, another caravan and a 4WD. We didn’t see another vehicle for over 4 hours – we had the very well maintained dirt road to ourselves. We crossed a few very dry sandy creeks with warning signs about the depth of the water in floods.

**A convoy of caravans the last vehicles we saw for 4 hours**

We passed a number of watering holes for the cattle with a windmill pumping the water from the bore. The cattle were so much bigger and fatter than any cattle we saw in Kazakhstan, Mongolia or Russia.

**Good looking healthy Australian cattle**

**Windmill pumping water into a tank for the cattle**

**Here in Australia we have fences and cattle grids – we didn’t see any in Kazakhstan, Mongolia or Russia**

The dirt road was so smooth that we were able to travel along at 85kph. We passed Mt Puckford on our left and also noticed some beautiful trees with white trunks growing beside the road

We took the right hand road at the junction to Landor when we were 238kms from Meekatharra. Dick had now installed three GPS units on the windscreen. Hema Maps loaned us their GPS which has all the charts of Australia, and we also used the small Garmin GPS we bought in England and the large Garmin we brought from our Cessna Caravan aircraft. We also have a number of maps and 4WD books that Pip follows – so we shouldn’t get lost!

Mt Gould appeared in the distance and as we got closer we could see some mines up on the hillside. Sadly the road to the mines said “no entry”.

We stopped at the restored Mt Gould Police Station (built in 1888) to make ourselves a cup of tea.

When Dick climbed out of the vehicle he noticed that the cover over the batteries had slipped down at the front. Not again!! He took the bolts off the cover and discovered that the aluminum cradle holding the batteries had broken at the front and was only being held on by the cover. The cover became jammed but we soon managed to remove it. We were just getting out the jack and some rope when a vehicle pulled into the historic site. It was Pete Friend-Ngul and his friend Rob Olsson who lived in Beecroft, Sydney and were travelling across Australia. They had seen us working on our vehicle and pulled in to offer us some assistance. They helped Dick lift the battery cradle up level and wrapped some rope around to hold it in place until we get to Meekatharra. Once again a breakdown meant we met some very friendly people, however this time it was wonderful to be able to speak the same language!!

**We found the battery cradle had broken off at one end**

**Pete and Rob stopped to give us a hand**

**We managed to rope up the cradle and put the cover inside the Earthroamer**

**You can see the rope holding the cradle up level**

**Rob kindly took this photo of us at Mt Gould**

After an hour we bid our new friends goodbye as they stayed to have a look at the old police lock up, and we headed towards Meekatharra. As the light was fading we saw our first emu and two little chicks as they ran across the road in front of us – too quick for a photo. We also saw our first kangaroos hopping along the road.

We crossed the Murchison River again at Moorarie station.

At 5.45 pm we drove off the road onto a side track and stopped for the night. We were about 100kms from Meekatharra and decided to stop as travelling on these roads at night has the risk of hitting a kangaroo – we don’t need any more panels off!!

Dick built us a lovely fire beside the Earthroamer and it was wonderful to sit out under the stars in the Australian outback.

**Sitting in front of fire where we stayed overnight**

Pete and Rob had driven into Meekatharra and they later rang us on our Iridium phone to tell us that there is a mechanic at the local garage who can help us in the morning.

Total today 530 kms 33,711 kms since Anchorage, Alaska.

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