July 26th 2017

We left the lovely camp on Whistle Duck Creek at around 9.00 am. It was quite a good trip out through the bush and lots of dry creek beds, some  of which show a flood depth of 2 metres..this is surprising but debris is visible high in the tree branches, so it must be a realistic measurement.

I was lucky to see a Mistletoe Maidenii as we drove by. The leaves are quite grey/green glaucous in colour and so are the flowers. Another plant I saw on passing was the Cockroach bush which belongs to the Cassia family.

We were lucky to be able to follow the grader as he worked on the very roughest part of the road. We passed him and were travelling slowly along the section of road which was set aside for traffic when a vehicle and van raced passed us on the wrong side of the road and amid the dust. Surprise surprise!!

Back on the Stuart Highway again we soon came to the Devils Marbles. What an amazing arrangement of huge rounded rocks. Further south we stopped in at Wauchope with the plan to buy fuel and found it to be $1.79 per litre so we only put a small amount in the truck…we will wait for a cheaper option!

We camped the night on the old World War 2 Army Staging Camp. It is a deserted wide flat space with some concrete pads which are most suitable to park a van on. We had been there an hour or so when who should appear, walking toward our van but my good friend Bronwen Menner. She and her husband Graham were camped in the area as well. We spent some time chatting with them and will catch up again in Alice Springs where we should arrive tomorrow some time.There are about 15 or 20 rigs camped on this free site. We had a view of Taylors Creek which is a wide dry and sandy creek bed.