Day 75 China Wall, Wolfe Creek Crater, Tanami Desert

 We got up early this morning, and again opened the blinds to a great view of the sun rising. An early breakfast and a quick last look and I spotted the lone white Egret sitting on the rock island in the middle of Caroline Pool. We headed back towards Halls Creek and turned off to go and check out ‘the China Wall’, the name implying the rock structure looked a bit like the Great Wall of China. It was a white rocky feature heading up a hill, that looked like it was made of bricks, about 400mm wide, so quite narrow. Worth the look.

After topping up on fuel and water, we headed to Tanami Road, and commenced the 1000km road that takes you through the Tanami Desert. They have surfaced the road for the first 30km, before it turned into a work in progress for another 30km, but the dirt road running beside the roadworks was actually really good. From there it turned into a rough and corrugated dirt road. We took our time. We turned off to go and check out the Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, the 20km road to it was pretty awful, complete with idiots who overtook with no warning or communication. Once again out of the dust cloud. A short walk up to the rim of the crater made over 300,000 years ago, revealed an over 20m drop to the floor, with water still remaining from the wet season, surrounded by salty soil. You could hear lots of birds chirping, so a fair bit of life living in the crater. The rim was a 3km walk around, but it was too hot for us to do. We spied a small Ringtail Dragon, a small gecko like dragon, sunning itself on the rocks, but well camouflaged with the rock, from being the same colour. We didn’t spy John Jarrett, but he’s probably a nice bloke anyway We returned to Bridget for lunch, before heading back out onto the terrible road, and back onto the Tanami Road. This side road made the Tanami look smooth.

sorry about the stitch effort, i left my phone in the bus, and wasnt going back for it. 

Matt took it easy and only an occasional vehicle heading the other way. We pulled over at a rest stop for Matt to have a break and a cuppa, and we spied a cross and sign and went to check it out. All we can gather from the sign, is that God spoke to someone there. So we took the time to pray and thanked our Lord for all the blessings we have had from being able to do this adventure. The other explanation for the cross and the sign could be that the piles of car parts on the side of the road inspired someone to ask for Devine intervention to get their dead car home. There are cracked alloy wheels, headlight trims,  all manner of destroyed tyres and an air cleaner of a hemi 245 valiant. Don’t know why I know that but I do. Probably from growing up in a valiant. There was a still smoking log burning next to a couple of tyres that had been driven for a very long time after they were flat, and the associated destroyed rim, I can only assume  it was a local aboriginal car given the fire while you change a wheel, and the state of the wheel and tyre. I’m not being racist, it’s just they have no mechanical sympathy. Drive it till it’s dead, then walk away from it. We jumped back into Bridget and Matt was about to drive off, when he saw a road train coming the other way and opted to let them through. Less rocks being thrown at me and the dust these triple road trains throw is like an instant fog . Zero visibility for the next 30 seconds. They pulled over to us and asked if we were ok and to comment on the bus, and then gave us a tip off that there was a camp a few km’s down the road, and then no real option for quite a distance to camp up. That wasn’t exactly how he worded it, it went more like “ you got a camp by sturts creek a couple a k’s down the road, but after that you’re %@$#&@ for somewhere before dark. So we drove to that spot, by Sturt Creek and there was another caravan already parked up, so we opted to end the drive for today there.

The creek had no water but the offshoot overflow pool had water in it. We sat in the dry creek bed in our chairs and relaxed for the afternoon. We spied a feral black cat, not quite the elusive Penrith Panther 😜! Again the birds were flying around, flies were buzzing and because of the water, mozzies were about.  We heard a baby black Cockatoo and watched the parents busy coming and going trying to feed it. We enjoyed being outside and watched the sunset, before I headed back to Bridget to cook Matt a beef Stroganoff. Pretty sure the only stroganoff on the Tanami. Was good too. After dinner, I did take the time to look up and watch the stars twinkling in the night sky. I am trying to make sure I make the most of being in the middle of nowhere, and enjoy the best views of the night sky.