Tuesday 5 June to Monday 11 June
Alice Springs to Halls Creek
Blog 4
Our last outing in Alice Springs was to the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame. The exhibition had just moved to its "new" premises in March this year and it was now located in the Old Alice Springs Gaol. It was a great exhibition with stories of women of the outback in the 1880's right up to current times.
The stories were of women who were first in their field, doctor, dentist, architect, engineer, pilot, politician, academic, clergy, sport and many other fields. Some of the milestones were as recent as the 1990!!!!
The idea, initial fundraising and hard work was the work of Molly Clark. Molly arrived at Andado Station with her husband and 3 sons in 1955. They initially lived in the original homestead and after they moved into the new house Mac built for the family Molly converted the old homestead into a homestay to supplement their income in drought times. Her husband died and her sons all died for various accidents and sicknesses and she had to sell up her property retaining only 45 square kilometres. She continued on at Old Andado Station. In 1980 Molly was motivated by the fact that the Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach was too male dominated and decided to start a Memorial Hall of Fame for Women Pioneers which she started on 8 May 1993. It was quite an amazing achievement with the work being an on going process.
We stocked up on supplies for our trip to Halls Creek on the Tanami Rd. We met another Bushtracker couple, Don and Maree from Geelong, who were also heading up the Tanami and decided to do the trip together.
We travelled in convoy with UHFs in hand and 20km north on the Stuart Highway headed west on the Tanami Road. We travelled over 100km on bitumen to the Tilmouth Roadhouse which made the drive easy. The countryside was quite green which a lot of shrubs. We stopped at the roadhouse for morning tea, petrol and to discuss the trip and get to know each other.
We detoured into the Yuendumu Aboriginal community to look at the art work. It was the usual rubbish filled community but the people looked clean and it had quite a nice feel to it. Some of the art work was very good they supply a lot of the galleries in Broome.
We headed back to the Tanami Road which was quite a good road, wide but very corrugated in parts. We stopped for the night at a fantastic rocky outcrop just off the road. The boys built a fire, we organised a BBQ for dinner, went for a walk around the area and just enjoyed the bush; the colours, the smell, the birds and the cattle that were grazing in the area.
It was a magnificent morning. We could still smell the smoke from the campfire before we were back on the Tanami Road and heading towards Rabbit Flat. The countryside is nothing like I thought it would be. It is green and there are lots of shrubs certainly not the desert I expected like the Oodnadatta Track.
On the way to Rabbit Flat we stopped at Quartz Ridge which is a small quartz outcrop that allows views of the surrounding flat plains. It took us 2 tries to finally find the dirt track up to the outcrop and some of it was quite narrow with shrubs. It was definitely worth the effort. We walked up to the top to enjoy the view. We stopped before 3pm to have enough time to start a fire and cook dinner before dark. Bruce Farrands and his French wife Jacquie have been proprietors at the roadhouse for 30 years. It is literally over 500km from any other place other than the local communities.
Bruce warned us to be careful of snakes during the day but there was no problem at night as the nights are too cold.
It is certainly a very remote part of Australia as none of our communications works, not radio, TV or satellite phone.
The journey continued with the same countryside although there were a few more rocks and termite mounds. We stopped for morning tea at the NT/WA border and turned our clocks back 1.5h. We drive past the Tanami Gold Mine and of course the road was much better near the mines. We stopped for lunch at Sturt Creek. It was hot and dusty with lots of flies and other travellers also heading to the Wolfe Creek Crater.
The girls decided to drive the 4km to the Billiluna Community to buy petrol unfortunately it was already closed for the day so we headed back to the Tanami Road just stopping to take a photo of the beginning of the Canning Stock route. We continued driving when all of a sudden the car and van swerved, we lost a wheel and the axle on the passenger side of the van. The car came off the road on the opposite side of the road and the van tipped on its side.
Thank goodness both Mike and I were OK and the car didn't tip. We were very lucky. A Halls Creek Shire council Toyota was just driving in the opposite direction and of course they stopped and Tony snatch strapped the van upright again and with all our upset we were SO lucky that a council truck with a bull dozer on the back just happened to come along. He took the bull dozer off the back of his truck and with the bull dozer picked up the front of the van and moved us off the centre of the Tanami Road and parked us neatly on the side so that we wouldn't be a hazard to anyone.
Tony luckily had an Iridium satellite phone which had reception so we could organise what needed to be done.
Don and Maree were fantastic and stayed with us overnight on the road. They continued their journey the next day while we waited for the tilt truck to come from Fitzroy Crossing, 460km, to pick up the caravan.
We sorted out what we could; I tidied and cleaned up in the caravan while Mike sorted out tyres and the car.
Steve, the truck driver, and Mike winched the caravan up onto the truck with some difficulty and then the truck headed slowly up the last 170km to Halls Creek.
When we got to the Wolfe Creek Crater turn off we decided that we might as well travel the 23km down the dirt road as we will not be coming back on the Tanami Road. It was absolutely magnificent and it really lifted our spirits.
We arrived at Halls Creek about half an hour before the truck and the van was off loaded at the caravan park. We were very grateful to be safe and in one piece and overwhelmed by peoples generosity with their time, skills and equipment.
