Alice Springs to Port Hedland via Gary Junction Road

Leaving Alice we were quite looking forward to our adventure on the Gary Junction Road. The first day was okay, although the road was very rough but as expected it was bearable.

The first community was Papunya and we were presented with this picture on our Toyota useless GPS.

However there was one significant difference to what we saw on our Navigation, that is there were no street names shown, nor was there one street or direction sign in Papunya. We literally drove around in circles, no doubt with the locals all laughing at us. But we did work the puzzle out in the end.

Just outside Papunya we were coming up to a car that was stopped in the middle of the road, it was surrounded by indigenous people. I said to Jayne that this would be interesting. As we approached at a slow rate, the mother was pushing her teenage son to the front to show us they were safe and for us to not worry. 

They asked us if we had some water and with 400L on board we could spare then enough to fill their totally empty radiator and leave them with some drinking water. They were trying to start the car, and it had absolutely no spark. They just kept cranking it until I reckoned their battery was about to die and I was wondering why they just kept cranking it without any sign of life. They must have known what they were doing because it finally did fire and then they turned it off!

At that point they said they were fine and we waved them goodbye as we drove off.

Filling up at Kintore was an experience. I checked with our driver to make sure we were getting the right fuel! Yes, it's $2.00 / L

Security at these Communities is always high

They had a break-in at the community shop that morning. I wonder why they do these things. It was a couple of kids. Were they just bored?

Our second night on the GJR was at Buck Hill. We had the place to ourselves

As usual the sunsets out here are spectacular

The days diving was okay, although the road kept deteriorating and we never saw another car. It's pretty lonely out here.

Jayne fancied this pretty bush flower. At Well 33 we meet up with an Aboriginal family and the father showed us this plant in a half cut-off Coke bottle. He adds water and squeezes it and gets a sweet wine coloured drink. I didn't taste it despite his offer.

A roadside stop to check inside

The elastic band around the paper towels was forgotten!

Nothing in-between these two

The Northern Territory - Western Australia border crossing. No quarantine checks here!

Len Beadell was commissioned to build roads in the desert with the sole purpose of testing rockets at Woomera, and then the atom bomb at Maralinga.  You'll see from the map just how amazing he was, spending years out in the middle of nowhere on his own, pushing through the desert.  The Gary Junction Road is shown in Green.  Before we got to the GJR we listened to one of his CD's and laughed for a solid 45 minutes.  Then we watched a DVD which helped to put everything into perspective.  He was a remarkable man.

One of Len Beadell's Plaques along the GJR

The burnt out Ration Truck at Kiwirrkurra.  The whole work team had nothing to eat or drink.

Diesel here was $2.40 / Litre.

Jupiter Well. Self pump water into the van with assistance of our external pump

Jupiter Well camp spot. We had it to ourselves yet again

We had to hurry to get to Kunwarritji before 11.30am as that's when the fuel service closed. We got there late despite driving too fast for this road. Luckily they opened Sunday morning so we could get fuel to move on.

The road between Jupiter Well and Kunwarritji was just terrible. It was the Gary Junction Collective of Corrugations. Not a road by any standard. I wished I didn't drive as fast as I did, as this no doubt caused a lot of the damage, despite having the tyres down to 25 psi.

We broke the Microwave again (3rd one we've had in this van), the oven door hinge and a couple of cupboard hinges. However the biggest issue was one we couldn't see.

When Jayne went to light the oven to cook a pizza, flames shot out the top at the rear, towards the window which burnt through the flyscreen.

We had broken the gas line to the oven, as well as a wire had come off the piezo ignition right in front of the broken gas line!

These two issues caused this explosion. Luckily it flared away from us, so no harm done, except for the poor flyscreen. I'm sure the piezo cable coming off and causing the flare up was a good solution as if it didn't light the van would have been filled with gas and the result could have been much worse.

There isn't much out here in-between these two communities

Our next camp was actually on the Canning Stock Route (CSR) at Well 33, we had to drive 4 kms on the Canning Stock Route! Quite exciting.

We actually camped on the grass, a nice change

We had the whole camp area to ourselves until 2 German guys pulled up right next to us.  With all this room around we wondered why, but it turned out they liked the security of being close, and we found out when they had a snake curled up around the roo bar of their 4x4!  They came banging on the caravan door asking if we could identify it (which we couldn't) so we had no idea if it was dangerous or not.  Jayne has since downloaded an excellent free app showing all the snakes in Australia and whether or not they're poisonous.  We discovered this one was harmless.

They were engineers and modified the Well overflow so they could shower

Fuel at Kunwarritji was $3.40 / litre! I didn't need more than 60 litres, and that was $204.00 worth!

Our next stop was Punmu Community, which was a really nice place. The locals were friendly as we were trying to track down the shop owner for fuel. It was a Sunday and they aren't open, but with the help of the fuel road train driver we tracked down Big John.  He had this crazy road train made out of 44 gallon drums outside of his house and drives the kids to school each day in their barrel road train. 

They get 100% attendance at the school because of this road train ride. If one kid doesn't go to school, the next day there isn't a ride. So the pressure from all the kids is strong and they all go. An amazing result when you consider other communities are proud if their attendance is above 70%!

Diesel was $3.00 / L here. And we filled up on Sunday without an opening fee.

Punmu provides free camping at Lake Dora, a salt lake 29kms out of town.

Our next stop was Carawine Gorge. A very pretty place, but with the wind it was very dusty.

So it was onto Marble Bar. The hottest town in Australia.

Their War Memorial Park was interesting

Their pub even more so. The largest schnitzel parmy we've ever had

Sue - Jayne tried to ring you but she couldn't work out the Telephone Exchange. She said you might be able to give her a lesson on how to use it?

In total we did 1,352 kms of dirt on the Gary Junction Road. 49 kms were good, 751 kms were just ok, 200 kms were terrible and 352 kms were just a collection of corrugations. To say they were teeth rattling corrugations is no way a exaggeration. Today in Port Hedland Jayne has a dentist appointment to replace a filling that come out while we were on the GJR. Talk about teeth rattling!

The first day we saw 2 other cars including the broken down locals, the second day not another car seen all day except in the communities. The other days max 3 cars a day. Very remote.

In Port Hedland we got the gas stove fixed yesterday by a Gas Plumber with his trusty tool who swaged the line out to form a new seal. $70 and 15 minutes all was working again. The door hinge is temporarily repaired via a whittled down stick, propping up the door. I hope this will hold until we're home.

Tomorrow we head south the Point Sampson (also known as Point Sandfly). The midges have me worried, they're bad enough here in Port Hedland. It'll be a case of spray, with more sopray.

Then we're off to Exmouth and Ningaloo Station, where there are no midges. This is our major destination.