Day 33 – The Plenty Highway – Day 2

At about 2am, the storm that we were enjoying so much when it was 50km away, now wasn’t so nice when it was on top of us. There was a bit of lightening, almost no rain, but the wind was so strong the van was being buffeted around quite a bit. I heard the table or chairs go, so raced outside to get these under the van for some protection. Justine and I have a pretty restless night’s sleep, we’re not scared as such, but it’s just a little un-nerving, the van is moving quite a lot. And of top of all this, it hasn’t cooled down either.

We get up early (I won’t say woke up, as I’m not sure we slept much). Unfortunately there is not much of a sunrise as there is a fair bit of cloud around. The view though is still spectacular. For us we are probably lucky there was not too much rain, as I could see it would turn these bulldust patches to a soup pretty easily.

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We’re on our way by about 7:30, we still probably have about 30km or so of the “rough stuff” to go.

We pass a convoy of 3 4x4s, and as you need to keep your distance between vehicles when travelling in the same direction due to the dust, I can hear on the CB that they call “just passed the caravan” as a marker to gauge the distance between themselves, I’m guessing I’m the caravan! I ask them how much more of the rough to expect, one comes back with the suggested “20 odd k’s”, another in the convoy tells me “it’s on an off for the next 100 or so k’s” I prefer the first response, but of course it is the 2nd that ends up being more accurate.

A quick stop at the 2nd cattle station on the road called Jervois for a top up of fuel, they are only 2.05/l. Bargain!

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It’s a strange road. Some places we are not much faster than walking pace, others we are pushing through bulldust at 20-30/kmh, sometimes we push up to 70 or 80 to help smooth out the corrugations, then other sections are just great and you could easily do highway speeds. Only trouble is you can get all these in less than a 10km section.

Along this section of road are some of the largest termite mounds I’ve seen so far.

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The tar starts about 100km before the Stuart Highway, and it is a little bittersweet to reach it. The bitumen is being extended another 20km or so east. You could do half the road at a time, or do it NT style and just bulldoze a new temporary road beside the current one. Then you can go to town fixing the road.

I’ve spent the last 525km with one eye on the road in front and the other eye in the rear mirror looking at the rear tyre to see that it is still round. Given how easy we had two punctures over the last week, it’s really amazing that we didn’t have more tyre issues.

We pull into the third station called Gemtree, just after the tarmac starts. I had thought it might take 3 days/ 2 nights for the trip, but we have done it in two. Power and a pool are just too much to pass up.