July 22nd

The road east to Oak Valley and South Australia has been an excellent gravel road all day. We have met about eight cars along the way..Sunday driving perhaps!

This morning while I was in charge of driving we passed 2 small groups of three camels on the road. They cantered/galloped ahead of us for awhile and eventually they allowed us to pass..feeeww! A good deal of frothing at the mouth and panic was going on..poor stupid animals.

The country varied between Mallee and low blue/grey salt bush. Very few flowers..eucalypts and the odd cassia, wattle, hop bush and emu bush. I found another type of Cassia which is hard to identify because my books both have Desert Cassia in them but they have differing Botanical names. However I collected a few seed pods to try in the dye pot.

We pass tanks sheds very regularly and filled up with water again.

 We are now well passed Oak Valley Aboriginal Settlement. It is actually 1 kilometre off this raod so we did not go in. It is named as a 'closed community'. We do have a permit to travel this road and through the area but felt it was manners not to go into the Community Centre.

Tomorrow we will pass through the Maralinga area.

Morning camp site of blue/grey salt bush

Tonight's camp amongst the Mallee scrub