A Bit Of Rough

Thurs 26^th June

As we were packing up to continue our journey the boys told us that the road ahead is a bit rough in places – A BIT ROUGH – that was an understatement. The corrugations were horrific and there were big rocks everywhere. Amongst that were ridges of sand that had heaped up between the wheel tracks. The road was quite wide so there were wheel marks everywhere where other people have tried to find the best way through.  There were quite a few mine vehicles on the road, all with one occupant and always going at least twice as fast as us. A lot of the country was flat, but there was still the odd rocky gorge at our side and rolling hills in the distance. When we finally got to some bitumen we let out a big cheer, we had all had enough jolting around and eating dust for a while.  

 

In the final part of our trip we saw six Rio Tinto trains carrying iron ore from the Pilbara into the port at Dampier. Each train had 160 carriages and was about 2km long. Luckily we didn’t meet any of them at a level crossing. We got to Dampier more or less in one piece, had lunch at the beach and then went in to Karratha where we got an oil change and new filters in the Rodeo.  We ended up camping out at West Peawah River free camp about 140km north of Karratha. Both of our vans had their full quota of dust inside – actually ours only had a thin dusting in the van but the spaces under the beds were full of it.