Part 5: Anna Plains Track to the Sandfire Roadhouse

8/10/2019 Part 5: Anna Plains Track to the Sandfire Roadhouse

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Anna Plains Track to the Sandfire Roadhouse on the Coastal

Highway

The Anna Plains Track.

The APT turned out to be more difficult than expected and was not going to give in easily, it took us

another 3 days and 200km to reach the NW coastal Highway near Sandfire Roadhouse.

10 Aug

Would have been my mums 103rd birthday today.

The first 2 days were very slow going and we only managed 37 km today.

We passed by a small gravel scrape filled with water. I didnt have to go up the hill but I fetched a pail

of water, but only to wash the windscreens with, it would not have been good enough to drink. Evenafter boiling, surface water is almost always contaminated by animal droppings.

Here are the footprints of a large camel as he (or her) shuffled his (or her) feet to make a neat

arrangement of droppings.


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The going was getting slightly easier but there were still very difficult sections requiring significant

deviations from the track and knocking down small trees up to 3 cm thick where they became

impenetrable.

This deviation was needed around a seemingly straight and easy track section where we were

confronted by a major thicket of Grevillia bushes and had to back up a few hundred meters and retreat

to the slopes of a nearby sand dune where the bushes had thinned out.

There was no evidence of a major obstruction on the most recent Google Earth image:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/vLVzug16UhJsYgumMXLVIdMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite


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Burnt Holly Grevillea are the worst to push though, their black, stiff and scratchy branches tear at theoutside of the Okas and their sharp hard roots are potentially very dangerous to tyres. Green living

bushes, spinifex and trees were fairly easy to run over and polished the bottom of the Okas removing

all oil drips, dirt, grime, wires, pipes and anything not securely bolted on or made of steel.

The most difficult terrain was irregular clumps of spinifex or tussock grass which covered the ground

whenever we had to deviate around impenetrable thickets of small trees and often hid small termite

mounds. They caused the Okas to bounce and roll alarmingly at even low speeds and put a tremendous

strain on springs and suspension components, not to mention cupboards doors.
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/Uj_Nwa7PkoyZ4_CJ6sXErNMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite


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At the campsite that night, the full moon rose pink in the east just as the red sun was setting in the

west. Spectacular, but we couldnt work out how to get both in the one photo.

Except with a bit of trick photography:


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We were approaching the end of our desert crossing now and achieved 57km today. So for our final

campsite on the track, Kaye cooked a superb roast lamb for all of us which we had with mint sauce.

Us enjoying Kayes roast lamb and mint sauce. We might have been running low on fuel and water, but

we certainly had plenty of good food and wine left:

And I made a contemporary minimalist arrangement for our dinner table centrepiece tonight, of

spinifex flowers in an empty Flashlube bottle:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/5YUtG8FBZOui1pE_zZMLaNMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsitehttps://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/r2TSWlcsUTGUtBPVa_L1ftMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite


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At the campsite that night bread was cooked on the campfire with mixed results. This one was fine
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/C6EKYwGvVeAckX7K5-EtW9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite


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11 Aug

Nice sunrise this morning for those up early enough (before 6am):

A brightly camouflaged moth had taken up residence in our kitchen.

Compare if you will with the same moth (a SpiranaRevolvens) spreadeagled and pinned behind a glass

case in the MAGNT (Museum and Art Gallery of the NT) in Darwin a few weeks later:


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Eventually the going did get a bit easier as we headed west and we managed 133 km today to reached

the NW Coastal Highway.

Finally the end of the desert track and into pastoral country, but we still had another 60km to go to the

highway.


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https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/aSgaO-T96f7ttjzNhyoh6tMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite


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11/13

After the essentials were done we ate out at the roadhouse restaurant and had rather a good dinner

with wine to wash it down.

However the work wasnt quite done, Dave still had to arrange for 2 new tyres to be freighted up from

Perth, which took a bit of organising seeing as we were around 2000km north of Perth.

Several phone calls later and he had tracked some down and they would be on the next available truck.

That gave us a day or so to wait so we took a lay day at Sandfire and did a lot of maintenance and

repair.

12 Aug

The lay day at Sandfire wasnt as lazy as it could have been, there were tyres to fit and swap around,

greasing to be done, various repairs to be completed as we all still had a very long way to go.

And we took time to reflect on where we had been and what we had achieved.

We had covered 700km of desert since leaving the highway near Fitzroy Crossing and reaching the

coastal highway near Sandfire but those 700km had taken 13 days, during which we had met no one

else, and our average distance per day was only 48km at less than 10kph. This was a lot slower than

expected and made worse by the rocketing fuel consumption which was more than twice the normal

rate. We also only found 2 sources of water in this distance so some frugality was necessary. Next time

we will learn from this experience.

But we had successfully achieved our 2 main objectives and were subsequently cheered(?) by the news


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that another similar expedition using smaller, nimbler 4WD vehicles had suffered even worse tyre

problems than we did.

We had suffered no major mechanical failures and after a tough desert crossing, all three Okas arrived

at their home paddocks many thousands of km further on, and spread across the country, with no

subsequent problems. Our Okas had proved once again their strength and endurance, plus our travels

had been in the relative comfort and security of larger vehicles.

That evening we ate out again for the last supper in our best attire (comparatively).


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13 Aug

In mid morning we sadly said our good-byes to Dave, Pauline, Deano and Kaye at Sandfire to await the

arrival of the new tyres, fuelled up with just enough expensive fuel to get to Broome and headed up the

highway into a fierce headwind.

We camped at the Goldwire Rest Area near Barn Hill and had a quiet evening, the first for more than 2

weeks.

Thus we had successfully completed a crossing of the Great Sandy Desert, definitely our most difficult

trek yet and one that not many people have done [we were aware of only 4 or 5 similar small

expeditions in recent years], but our 2014 journey did not start or end here, and other sections of our

2014 outback adventures can be seen here:

Adelaide to Halls Creek

Broome to Darwin

Darwin to Adelaide
http://dandjribbans.blogspot.com.au/2014/09/outback-trek-2014-darwin-to-home.htmlhttp://dandjribbans.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/broome-across-top-to-darwin.htmlhttp://dandjribbans.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/adelaide-to-halls-creek.html

Part 5: Anna Plains Track to the Sandfire Roadhouse

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Transcript of Part 5: Anna Plains Track to the Sandfire Roadhouse