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Published: October 14th 2012
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We rolled into Halls Creek bright and early … everything starts early in the outback. The Halls Creek Information Centre was even open at 8:00 am. A gay, cheery young man was full of good advice on the Tanami Desert Road which we needed to take if we were to go to Wolfe Creek Crater. “A few corrugations and a bit of a rough patch near the end. You should go, it is great. Of course you can take your caravan. There’s a great camping ground at the crater. We can even sell you the Wolfe Creek movie if you like.”
2 ½ hours and 130 kms of bone jiggling, teeth chattering, caravan vibrating corrugations later, we arrived at a very hot, windy, dusty almost treeless camp ground to assess the state of our vans. They were not a pretty site. Covered both inside and out in red bull dust, cupboards open, bits and pieces strewn around we set about reassembling. The weld on our table leg had sheered so using the table was a fine balancing act until we can get it fixed or replaced. The weld holding the spare tyre also sheered. Pepper corns and salt had escaped
Tanami Desert Road
130 kms of bone jiggling, teeth chattering, caravan vibrating corrugations. the grinders and were strewn about the place. It took us a while to work out what the funny round balls were. Pat and Marion lost some crockery, their hand basin came off its mounts and like us many of the drawer fronts came off. And to think we had to do this all again to get back to the highway!
At least the beer was cold and the Crater worth the visit …and we were not the only fools there. It was extremely windy overnight so we were thankful for the security our vans gave us as we could hear the challenges the tenters were having keeping tents and ground connected. By morning everything was red, us, our sheets, the kitchen, the chairs outside, the crockery … you name it, it was red!
The Wolfe Creek Crater was quite surreal; a small range of very steep hills in a perfect circle, just under 1km across. Inside there were concentric circles of vegetation surrounding a small salt pan in the very middle, each ring of vegetation finding its own micro climate niche based on the water that drained to the centre following rain.
After an early breakfast,
packing up and a walk to the crater we were on that damn road again, jiggling and chattering our way back to Halls Creek. The road home always seems faster and not as bad. This again seemed true, but only marginally.
Back in Halls Creek we fuelled, Pat and Marion remounted their hand basin and while we waited for the glue to set we had coffee. Joan decided to pay that gay, cheery young man a visit, but much to her disappointment he was not there. Instead another young lady told her how we could have left our vans at the Police Station while we went for a day visit. Wish we had been told that the day before.
Repairs sort of completed, we headed off with our new found friends for Fitzroy Crossing.
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Angela Reimann
non-member comment
What a cool place. Your van has been annointed with Kimberley red dirt, properly blooded, eh?