Our Trip

Day Nine 

Brrr. The temperature was dropping.

Day nine saw 3 degrees at 6:30am. 

Chloe and I made yummy pancakes

for breakfast with some fried devon

and maple syrup and of course, billy tea.

Our little friends loved to ride the 

'horsies' each morning when the girls rolled 

their swags. After they'd had a few 'rides'

the girls would tell them that the horsies had to go

to bed, and they'd load the swags onto the ute

and the little girls would 'feed' them spinifex grass

through the cage. 

There were quite a few dingoes calling

throughout the night and we had a very 

scrawny, malnourished looking camel come

by for a visit as we were packing up. 

He had white foam all around his mouth, 

so I guess he'd just brushed his teeth and was

looking for a place to rinse. 

Well, we set off and managed to do 20 km 

in one and a half hours! 

This was due to having to cross numerous sand dunes that were 

very soft and the track being very windy and doubling back

onto itself and a lot of track damage that had you rocking

slowly, back and forth as you came down off the dune. 

It was very slow going, but we pressed on. 

We came across a motorbike

that hadn't quite made it some time ago. 

And then we reached Well 36 ruins. 

Some of the wells along the track

(other than the restored ones),

are ruins that are distinguishable and others,

are just a few scraps of metal, maybe

a bucket or two, and a semi caved in hole in the ground. 

At one Well, there were 2 drums of

water sitting under the sign. 

We guessed they were for some passer by,

possible a cyclist, that had prearranged for them

to be left there. Whatever the case, we left them

for someone who needed them more than us. 

Thanks to the restored Wells, we were well supplied.

(pun intended)

We stopped along the way

when we saw good supplies of firewood.

We were carrying a lot more now as 

the weather was getting colder, which meant

the lingering over the fire was longer,

and the showers (the few we had) needed

to be hotter. So, we would radio that we were stopping

to collect wood, or that we were stopping to pick 

up the firewood that had fallen off Emilee's ute,

which was often the case due to the rough track,

do our collections and set off again.

Of course, I would jump up on the roof,

get a few shots in, then help out with the gathering. 

From Well 35 to Well 34,

we hit some of the worst corrugated

stretches of road that we have ever come across! 

It was a teeth rattling, bone jarring,

belly jiggling, cruiser debolting,

step tread cracking, aerial wobbling,

engine mount loosening, series

of bumps that had you flying along

at the fastest pace you could, 

and no stopping allowed! 

As you can see,

we did have to stop now and then,

which was a pain for our old girl

because she found it so hard to pick up her pace again

and bumpity bump she went to try and catch up once more. 

Notice the piece of firewood dropped

from Emilee's ute. We did NOT stop and pick 

this one up! No siree! 

We finally reached our days 

destination and boy were we all glad! 

It had been a very, hard and bumpy day,

but we were very excited to get to Well 33.

Kunawarritji.

I think in the photo below, 

Dave is reminiscing over times gone by,

when he used to climb these old mills

and work on them with his dad. Sigh. 

Good old days. 

Here at Well 33, we had massive

supplies of water, that was fed into a tank

with a tap!! Very exciting as we didn't have to hand

crank to get water. Just turn the tap and the water 

came gushing out. 

So, with the ease of this, we were able to 

do ALL our washing! 

This was quite an undertaking, but

so worth the effort to be able to climb

into freshly washed clothes. 

After numerous trips back and forth 

to the tank, we finally finished the mammoth 

task and had everything hung out to dry 

on every available line, space, bull bar,

tent rope, ladder, stump, bag on the ground or

whatever we found that would work. 

Maddy and Emilee even decided to wash each

others hair. Which had them shivering, by the way,

as the water was FREEZING! 

And if you're wondering,

yes, it was a mammoth task to wash

Emilee's hair. Just as gargantuan 

as the hand washing of our clothes. 

We were happy to relax by the fire

and watch the beautiful sunset over the windmill. 

 Four other vehicles came in after dark

and broke our reverie,

but we were content to be wearing

clean clothes after a nice shower,

and sipping our billy tea after

a meal of chilli and cornbread. 

We had managed to come another 104km

down the track and were looking 

forward to a good night's sleep and

a little trip into 'civilization' 

in the morning (with the possibility

of a cold can of coke). 

To be continued...………….