The Tanami Track

It's a 1200km dirt road from Alice Springs to Halls Creek. It had opened just a week or so before we attempted to travel across it, thankfully. The last fuel stop was Yuendemu before a 784km stretch of no fuel until Halls Creek. We carried 40L of extra fuel on top of the car, but we weren't 100% sure about how far that would last. It was going to be pretty close by our calculations added to that was the risk of the dirt road chewing more fuel. We were both a little worried, although we didn't let on to each other at the time.

The Rav was doing pretty well across the track up to the end of the first night. The start of the track was rocky and corrugated but as we entered into the Tanami Desert the road turned to red sand. Due to the above average rainfall of the 2010/11 wet season the desert wasn't really desert-like. Instead it was filled with small green plants and spinifex grass (those buggers sting).

Our campsite sunset was spectacular. Here's Peta setting up the tent while I just walked around taking photos. As soon as the sun went down it got cold! I now understand how it can be 30 degrees during the day and 0 degrees at night!

The stars were spectacular. I finally got a snap of the stars rotating around the southern pole.

Other than small green bushes and spinifex grass there were long stretches of beautiful golden wattle that lined the road and went as far as the eye could see. They looked amazing, like we were driving through a maze of wattle.

A slight disappointment was the defaced Welcome to Western Australia sign. I guess it reflected our sadness of leaving the NT... No more Paul's Ice Coffee.

The next night's camp site was the Wolfe Creek Meteorite crater, the second largest in the world. It was quite impressive. Peta was a little worried about a deranged murderer coming to torture and kill us in the middle of the night (re the Wolfe Creek movie). Luckily we were spared any type of murderous rampage.

Finally it was time to leave the Tanami Track and re-join bitumen road. It was a sad thought that we had finished our journey across the dirt track, but this was soon forgotten as we enjoyed the smoothness of highway driving! ahhhhh.

Halls Creek itself is only a bit more than a fuel stop and a couple shops, but the campsites towards old Halls Creek were amazing! There was some 4wd action and the Rav was love being back on dirt road, crossing small creeks and bumping over pebbly beaches. See the next post for some footage.