Gibson Desert/Gunbarrel Highway Remote Outback Trip, June/July 2023

Participants: 

Penny and Spence  - Toyota Landcruiser 76 (trip leaders)

Alex and Diana – Toyota Landcruiser 79

Sue and Steve (Burgo) – Toyota Landcruiser 200

Keith – Ford Ranger 

Day 1 - We all met at the usual meeting point – the Lakes Roadhouse on a very cold morning and had a coffee and brekky while we waited for everyone to arrive. Setting off and heading for Boondi Rock for about a 5 and a half hour drive, stopping at Southern Cross for a bite to eat and refuel. We arrived at Boondi Rock later in the arvo and set up camp while it was still light and walked around the Rock and the rather square lake.

Day 2 - Setting off in the morning was again freezing cold with the temp dropping below zero but blue skies. We were heading to Laverton about 5 hours drive.

On the way we stopped at Coolgardie for Coffee and brekky, past Credo Station and then Menzies and checked out some old machinery and then Gwalia (near Leonora). Gwalia is a great place to visit as we had tea and scones on the balcony of Hoover House overlooking a giant open pit mine. The Museum is great to see and also check out the tiny village of old tin shack houses that the early miners and settlers lived in still perfectly preserved.

Alex’s trailer lights were also not working so we took the opportunity then to fix them. It was found a connector had corroded terminals. We arrived at Laverton some time later in the arvo and checked into the Caravan Park and had dinner at the pub. Note: I had the T-bone Steak this time instead of Chicken Carbonara!

Day 7 – We left Curtin Springs early on another freezing cold morning and headed for Docker River (Kaltukatjara) Campground. The plan was to swing by Uluru again and do the 10km walk around the rock which should take an hour or two. My feet now were very painful due to the blisters and I could hardly walk so I elected to drive around the rock stopping at every vantage point and jumping out and taking a few photos. After that we all caught up again and continued to Docker River.

On the way we stopped briefly at Lasseter’s Cave where he had reportedly first discovered a reef of gold in 1897 but unfortunately never found it again and perished a short distance away in 1930 searching for it.

The weather had been good all day and a lovely clear starry night.

Luckily for us there was no water down there. After a few more hours driving on David Carnegie we camped in the bush and had a lovely sunset and another awesome fire to end the day.

After another cold night and wondering why my trailer battery had not charged from yesterday’s long drive, I thought maybe it had gone into ‘Safe Mode’ which I had heard Lithium batteries do to prevent going too low and to prevent damage. I had read somewhere that you can jump start them with another battery or even unregulated Solar Panels. I had a portable Lithium battery power bank that can be used to jump start your cranking battery, so I got that out, connected it and pressed the button and hey presto my battery was turned back on and registering some volts although low. As the sun had started to rise, I got my Solar Panels out and connected them to put some more Amps into the battery. It was a lovely sunny day, so I tried out the hot showers, did some washing and hung the clothes out, had a nap and just had a great day walking around the station taking a few photos, even chatting to one of the helicopter pilots as he had just come back from his day out mustering and shooting camels.

Day 14 – We decided to head straight home today cutting our original return by 2 days as it was only about 700kms back to home via the blacktop. I had discovered yesterday that one of my leafsprings had broken so I didn’t want to do any more offroad in case it made it worse. We stopped at Paynes Find for fuel and food and stopped again at New Norcia and sampled some of their bakery delights. As we got closer to Perth, we all went our separate ways to home.