We head north for Paynes Find and set camp!

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Having collected the camping trailer and packed the night before, we headed off early on Sunday morning to meet up with M&C at M's home. Getting to the general area, an attractive leafy suburb of Perth, was easy. Actually finding the house was more of a challenge and we missed a couple of road signs because I was driving too fast. Turning a camping trailer on a narrow road took time and we arrived a round 15 minutes late. M,C and C's son T were waiting for us, their two white vehicles were packed and ready to roll. We were offered tea/coffee and after a chat about the journey plan, off we headed. Our route took us through wooded, undulating topography with dense vegetation. This soon opened up into arable fields.

Our little convoy consisted of three 4x4s - all white. Heading the trio was C and T, then us with the camping trailer and finally M taking up the rear. We were all tuned to channel 40 on our UHF radios and occasionally communicated regarding road conditions or fuel stops.

Our first stop was in Toodjay, an attractive little town some 60kms north of Perth. Here we pulled in to visit the bakers where we bought some hot pies and sandwiches which we ate sitting on a doorstep under the Victorian glass arcade. This relaxed informality was indicative of how the rest of our week was to be. My sandwich was excellent. C then bought a number of loaves of bread to keep us fed during our trip. Then it was off again, heading northward.

The road took us through extensive wheat fields, some of them hundreds of acres in size. The height of the vegetation gradually reduced and the countryside very quickly turned into outback scrub. Along one stretch, the roadside was littered with kangaroo roadkill.

There were many road trains - enormous trucks towing up to three heavy trailers behind. Some of them oscillated and weaved wildly which could be quite alarming as we approached with a combined speed of over 200km/hr.

There were a couple of stops for fuel with a final one being at Paynes Find in the late afternoon. Hazel and I grabbed an ice cream whilst M&C went to visit an old friend nearby who had been unwell as the result of being attacked by a wild bull some weeks earlier. 15 mins later we were on our way again heading for Mount Magnet. After some time we turned off the paved road onto a broad dusty track. It was not possible to travel at much more than 60km/hr due to the gravel on the road and occasional creek crossings. Due to dust thrown up by the vehicles, we travelled at approximately 500m intervals because visibility was down to just a few metres if you got too close to the vehicle in front. After what seemed like miles of this rough track, we arrived at a remote outback 'station'. Here there was a collection of buildings, rusting vehicles, lots of dogs, some goats and like an oasis in the desert, there was green grass.

We were invited into the main station house where M&C introduced us to the station manager and his wife. M&C kept some of their camping and prospecting equipment at the station and had come to collect it on route to our proposed campsite in the bush some kilometres away. The visit was short as we only had a short time by sunset.

Heading back onto the dust track we drove the last few kms to a small track leading off into the bush. The track was very narrow and the bush squeezed us in with branches scraping close to the vehicles. Around 3km in, the convoy drew to a halt in a clearing just off the track and we got out to discuss how best to set up camp. It took about an hour to assemble the camping trailer and erect the various awnings, poles, pegs and fittings. M&C collected some firewood and soon had a cheerful blaze going. They told us that they did all cooking on an open wood fire. I could see from looking around that there was a plentiful supply of dry timber close at hand. Little did we know just how accomplished these guys were at producing amazingly high quality food on nothing ore than a pile of burning firewood. Over the coming days we were to enjoy some really stunning meals.

On that first night we had pork chops using pork raised and slaughtered on the station. It was done to perfection in the frying pan and cooked on the open fire.

The five of us sat around the camp fire and enjoyed an excellent meal, a fine bottle of Margaret River red wine and some very fine conversation on gold, the outback and life in general. It looked like we were going to get along just fine.

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