AJ120’s 2013 Outback Odyssey

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[QUOTE=photoprado;430712]Our guide, Sam, QUOTE]

I'll stretch your memory, but was your guide Sam Watson?

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Gunbarrel Highway

Yes it certainly is a magic part of our country!

The following morning it was time to say thankyou and farewell to John and Megan and family and head on our way.

We headed west towards Warburton, all dirt roads in pretty good condition; so a very relaxed and crusiy day just soaking in the views of the countryside, pictures don't do it justice but here is one anyway.




We needed to stop at Warburton to top up with fuel before heading out to tackle the Gunbarrell Highway. At $2.35 warburton had the most expensive fuel on the entire trip, there and Yulara were the only places to be more than $2 @ litre.

Although a bit earlier than we might normally have camped as we both felt a little tired we decided to stay in the compound behind the roadhouse at Warburton, in Hindsight I would have preffered to push on a bit and bush camp out the road. Whilst the facilities were pretty decent it was $36 for an unpowered site, we also had to pay a $10 key deposit that was refundable on leaving. The catch was that the roadhouse doesn't open until 9 O'clock, and of course that is WA time and our bodies were still running on SA time, so 10.30 by our body clock, so we forfieted the key deposit and it cost $46 for an unpowered site in locked compound. Given we generally prefer a bush camp anyway it was an expensive shower!

Once again on the road and the Great Central road heading West out of Laverton was Bitumen as far as the eye could see and then some, at the first opportunity we got of the main Highway and onto the old great central road which is still dirt, pretty reasonable condition and also cut off a few Kms to access the Heather Highway where we turned anyway. The Heather Highway was a very well maintained road in excellent condition until we reached the intersection where it turns directly north and towards Wiluna.




As as we turned North it turned into a goat track, to be honest I was surprised the road had been as good as it had been to that point so it was no great surprise.

Just one of our stops for smoko and a reminder that those who come ill prepared for the conditions dont always make it home with everything they left with.






Cheers Andrew

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Our guide, Sam,

I'll stretch your memory, but was your guide Sam Watson?

It was indeed. Is he still around? We had a couple of Anangu ladies with us as well. I don't remember their names they spent most of their time with the missus and baby doing the Honey ant and Tinka while we went looking for roo.

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Gunbarrel Highway

Len Beadell is one of my heroes, reading his books and listening to his stories about his exploits in the bush just leaves me in awe of what he was able to achieve. Even though we had already been traveling on what was originally the Gunbarrell Highway I was very excited to reach the start of the remaining untouched section of his signature road.







The Gunbarrell highway at this point is far from a true highway and much more a rough outback track. It’s hard to describe how rough a track is because it’s all relative to what people have driven before. A Pradopoint member had asked me before leaving to give him the heads up on the road so we decided to invent our own rating system for corrugations which we continued to use throughout the trip with all 3 of us giving the various tracks pretty similar ratings.

On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being a freshly graded road in excellent condition and 10 being the worst road we have ever driven on, which to this point was the road into Mitchell falls when it hadn’t seen a grader for over 10 years!

Although like most tracks conditions continually change we rated the Corrugations on the Gunbarrell a solid 6 on our scale. In fact in many places along the track there are now numerous tracks as new ones have been created to get around major washouts and corrugations, although many of the bypasses are just as corrugated as the original now and with up to 5 different tracks to choose from at times it was often pot luck to pick the least corrugated!

Its always important to keep your eyes peeled on tracks like this as sometimes you don’t get much notice of the change in road conditions such as in the picture below!




Cheers Andrew

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Gunbarrel Highway

A little way down the track is one of the Trees that Len put a blaze on with his “razor sharp survey axe” and also added an aluminium plaque to let people know where they are. It’s unfortunate that over the years a bunch of low lives have souvinered these plaques, fortunately Lens Daughter Connie Sue has replaced most of them with replicas such as this one.








A few hundred metres away from the blaze tree is a good camp spot that has a working bore pump that produces pretty decent water, certainly good enough for cleaning and showering and no doubt Len would have drunk it without thinking twice.




Cheers Andrew

[mjrandom Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close mjrandom]

Andrew fabulous report and pics. Many thanks for sharing. On a side note are you concerned about that bloke in dark glasses that seems to be stalking you?

[Palmer Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Palmer]

Sounds great trip.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

. On a side note are you concerned about that bloke in dark glasses that seems to be stalking you?

No, he's pretty harmless

Cheers Andrew

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Gunbarrel Hwy

Just a few random shots of the track

[








Cheers Andrew

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Gunbarrel Highway

On top of Mt Beadell is the replica of Len's Theodolite that he used to navigate his way though the bush by reading angles off stars and plotting his location from those measurements.




The drive up Mt Beadell on the Eastern side is pretty straight forward, here we are parked at the top.



A friend back at home told me that there was no way I would get up the Western side towing the trailer, naturally after checking it out I had to give it a go As always photos really don’t show the whole story but is was not overly difficult, certainly didn’t require lockers or anything like that.




Cheers Andrew

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Gunbarrel Highway

And a couple of shots taken around sunset after we camped not far past Mt Beadell.







You can see a few clouds in the background of those pictures, that really wasn’t much of a warning for what mother nature was going to unleash on us in a few hours time!

The next day was a very different day on the Gunbarrel to the one we had just done had!

Cheers Andrew

[Snaga Wishing I was lost Find all posts View Profile Close Snaga]

Great read and very inspirational!! Soon, soon I'll get out an explore some more!!

[GTX Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close GTX]

Great trip and reports and photos!
Thanks for sharing it all :-)

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Gunbarrell Highway

Thanks for the comments and the rep from everyone!

As I said the few clouds in the sky at sunset was no real indication of what Mother Nature was going to unleash a few hours after the sun went down. She must have thought we needed some excitement in our night and delivered us an outback thunder and lightning storm of biblical proportions! We copped a bit of rain where we were but must have been towards the edge of the rain affected area judging by how much wetter it was a few kms down the track the next morning, none the less we had a fair belting of rain for a while and thunder that I swear loosened the fillings in my teeth!

The next morning after we packed up we once again headed off, although this time it was more like traveling on the Gunbarrell River.

I was standing behind the camera for these shots and Trish is having the time of her life playing in the mud!











Fortunately it was fairly solid ground around this section so not too boggy.

Cheers Andrew

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Gunbarrell Highway

A couple more of Lens signs (replicas from Connie Sue)







Its not really an outback trip until you see your first Bustard, I hear they are delicious, pity they are protected lol.





At least the Prado is starting to look the part now!




Cheers Andrew