Day 30 & 31, The Tanami Road (Sun 26th July & Mon 27th July)

Sunday

We headed off this morning around 0930, stopping for fuel on the way out, fuel was pretty cheap at $1.40 so we filled  up some jerry's as well, that gave us a total of 165 litres which meant we should be able to make it all the way to Halls Creek.

We headed North and the turn of onto the Tanami was only 20 or so kilometers up the road.

The road was sealed and an easy drive to Tilmouth Well, so easy in fact that after a little rest stop and look around Tilmouth Well we decided to continue on and find a free camp further up the road.

We had read that the tar end 50 kilometers before Tillmouth Well but it remains tar for another 50 kilometers, as we approached the end of the sealed road we braced ourselves for the horrible road ahead.

Our Seclude Campsite

The road was just fantastic, it was corrugated but the were more like ripples, the suspension soaked them up and we sat at 90 kph pretty much all the way to our first stopover another 200 kilometers up the road.

We use Wiki Camps mainly which is pretty good but along the Tanami it showed places that dont really exist, or at least we couldn't find them, what we did find was a free camp called Floodout Creek.

Floodout creek was great, it is huge area which goes back a long way so you cannot be seen from the road, its flat and has lots of shelter from wind, there is also a fair bit of fire wood lying around.

We arrived at the camp about 1400 and were set up by 1500, relaxing we waited for other travelers to arrive but none came, we the site to ourselves which was great but a little scary I guess.

That night we hoped to see the stars at there best and thought we might hear the Dingoes calling,unfortunately it was a little too overcast for the stars and we heard no dingoes in fact except for the wind it was very quiet. 

Monday

Not much of a welcome into WA !

Back on the Tanami this morning heading towards Halls Creek, we haven't decided where we will stop tonight but we aim to do a couple of hundred kilometers before we stop.

The road remained pretty good until we got into WA then the patches of rock and large corrugations became more frequent, we encountered a bit more traffic too, often being stuck behind clouds of dust not being able to see the vehicle making the dust and not being able to pass.



We came across an accident where a bloke drove his car right up the rear end of a truck, nobody injured fortunately but the car was most likely a write off, resulting in an abrupt end to someones holiday I presume.

There was also a significant increase in rubbish and car wrecks along the road spoiling the natural beauty of the outback countryside.

We were told by a fair few people that decent free camps were difficult to find at this end of the Tanami and that was looking like being very true, all the ones we stopped at were either right on the road and just a gravel patch, and others were just great big dump pits with rubbish all over the place.
We did not feel comfortable staying in any of those so we decided to push on to Halls Creek .

We arrived at halls Creek pretty weary after the 600kl drive, there is only one caravan park in Halls Creek so that's were we went.

Our drive across the Tanami was pretty uneventful, for the most part a pretty good road and worth using as a short cut to the Kimberley from Alice Springs.