Day 22 Past Wolf Creek, Tanami Road

A 4am wake up shouldn’t be a surprise when you go to sleep at 8pm. Einstein is credited with saying, 6 hours for a man, 7 hours for a woman, and 8 hours for a fool so I guess a 4am wake up qualifies me as a fool, in this case. I wanted to get on the road early so I woke the kids and then got them to wake Jacqui, and by 5am, we were on the road dodging Kangaroos and Camels for the first 2 hours.
We passed The Granites Gold mine at about 8am which is where our friendly road-train driver was dropping his fuel before heading back to Alice. Along the way, we didn’t see as many ant nests but they certainly got large. Some where twice the size of me and I can’t imagine what they eat.
Not long after passing The Ganites, we came upon another mine just short of the WA border. A little further along the track we came upon 3 large trucks in convoy and after contacting them on the UHF, they moved over and I passed them. These guys are regulars on the track and gave us some advice on the road conditions ahead, and we then tried to put a little distance between us and them on our way to the infamous rabbit Flat Roadhouse.
At first we thought we’d missed it. We took the signposted turn-off and initially, all we saw was a clump of trees and some old decrepit fuel bowsers. Upon my second lap of the obvious turning circle, I saw an old cement building nestled in the trees with a hand painted sign over an archway indicating Rabbit Flat Roadhouse. Through the archway was a small counter with thick steel bars ensuring no-one was getting in, or out without the owners approval. We took our time reading the signage indicating what was available, always with the feeling of being watched and hearing noises from behind the bars.
The sign read, Ring Bell Loudly, so I did and almost immediately, the garden gnome like figure of one of the owners, Jacqueline Furrand appeared. At a little under 5 feet tall, and of about 70 years, the grey haired lady with the strong French accent didn’t appear particularly intimidating until she came out to the ancient fuel browser to grace me with the opportunity to pay $2.20 per litre for fuel. I developed a grudging respect for the apparent French Legionnaire when I saw her emerge from behind the cage in her camo pants, her camo jacket, and her camo singlet. Sadly she’d neglected to wear the matching camo bra but I wasn’t about to tell her it was a problem. Particularly once shed told me about how she arrived at Rabbit Flat with her úsbend’ in 1969 and slept the 1st 10 years with a gun under her pillow, while the local indigenous community tried to scare her off. Once the Mabo Legislation had been passed, she negotiated the retention of her land with the local land council and she’s determined to see out her days at Rabbit Flat. So fed up is she with the constant intrusion of all members of the public, she has decided to shut the shop but remain in the house. As of Christmas 2010, there will be no fuel or food available for the 1,300km of the Tanami track and Jacqueline Farrand doesn’t give a rat’s bum. In her words, eye av dun my bit for 40 years. Let someone else av a go. Such logic is hard to argue with.
Another 125km and we crossed into WA. Naturally, we took another Border Crossing photo. S you can see, some of us had a little difficulty timing the feet in the air theme. As we got further into WA, the road seemed to get even worse with intense corrugations that continued for miles and as we got closer to Billiluna, the tracts of bulldust ran unabated for as much as 5km. This brought our average speed down to as low as 20km for long periods.
Billiluna was another anticipated fuel stop that turned out to be an exclusive Aboriginal community where no-one spoke to us and fuel was no longer available. Not only did we feel unwelcome, Jacqui was seriously un-nerved when we were followed to the town gate by a car-load of locals intent on making sure we didn’t hang around.
With Billiluna out of the question for camping, things became a little tense when Jacqui spotted the occasional spot-fire in the scrub. Adding to our mood after 14 hours of driving was the possibility we might need to camp at Wolf Creek. While Jacqui was determined not to camp there on the basis of a good friend’s recap of the movie, the argument ceased when we discovered the gate to the crater locked shut.
We kept driving looking for a spot to camp when I noticed a track leading into the scrub behind a water tower. I walked along the track and when I saw the track open into a clearing, I decided this would be the spot. We scared away about 20 Kangaroos, set up the camper as per the night before, (still attached to the car), and after 14 hours of driving, we all put our heads down for the night.
Cheers,
Jorg