Onwards to Warburton (twice!)

  Onwards to Warburton (twice!)

The next morning, with the campers dripping and heavy rain apparent to the north of us (that’s the direction we were heading), we had little choice but to stay put for another day. We pussy-footed around in the mud and puddles all day even though the weather cleared our site from the southwest mid-morning. We took the opportunity to recharge our batteries with our solar panels and do a well needed clean-up of our gear. Maurs and Shirley made damper and bread on the campfire. Kev even found the glasses that he thought he’d lost in Rawlinna. We also took stock of our fuel supply and realised that all of us might not quite make it to Warburton. All this running in soft sand and ruts was taking its toll on fuel consumption. I had ¾ of a tank (about 45 litres) plus 20 litres spare so was probably okay but Kev’s Pajero was getting low while he had an extra 20 litres sitting on his roof. We figured that we had another 220 kilometres to go and we would assess it at our next campsite.

Bread - the hard way!

Bread - well worth it!

Golden Orb spiders after rain

It was the tenth day of our journey and we drove to within 120 kilometres of Warburton. It was not without incident. As we picked along the track we heard an ominous, ugly dragging sound coming from underneath the vehicle (What was that Andy’s number again? – I could feel my arm and leg preparing to jump ship once more). Fearing that the wheel bearings had seized or something similar, we stopped and jacked up the rear wheel. It turned! The noise was being caused by the remnants of our protection plate pressing on the drive shaft. So not a fatal problem. Kev had some fencing wire (he’s a bloody legend) and he wired up what we couldn’t remove of the plate to minimise the rubbing and ergo, sickening noise.

Less protector plate means...less protection!

The track was pretty abominable with deep ruts and tracts of soft sand. We were making roughly for a place on our map called Waterfall Gorge but we didn’t note any decent campsites when we got to the approximate area, nor any signs saying “Waterfall Gorge”, nor any gorge for that matter and definitely no waterfall, so we pressed on until we found a campsite (it was a hundred metres off the track but obviously one used before by other travellers). As it was around 4 pm by now we hurried to set up camp with the promise of a barbecue, sweet potato cooked in the coals and a warm bed.

Gettin' the hang of the guitarlele

Connie Sue sunset

Next morning we pooled our fuel reserves into Kev’s Pajero and he and I took off replete with empty jerry cans to refill and return to the camp site in the one day. It took five hours to get there without a camper on the back and that meant that we couldn’t linger too long or else face driving the track in darkness. Fortunately there’s not that much at Warburton to linger around anyway. As it was, we did drive the last 20 kilometres in darkness but easily found the campsite thanks to Maurs and Shirley shining flashlights wildly when they saw our headlights coming. The big danger in this country is wild dogs – not dingoes, although we saw numbers of them too – but wild feral dog packs that have adapted to the area. You can hear the difference at night between the howls of the dingoes (which are kind of comforting) and the cacophonic rabble of a dog pack. I mention it here because that was why Maurs and Shirl were a bit glad to see us – they had seen “eyes” in the bush nearby while they were walking out to the road to guide us in. Otherwise they had had a brilliant day without us, reading books, chatting, making billy tea and baking bread in the camp oven in complete seclusion.

Somebody's private road - we could venture no further

It was time to set off on our final push to Warburton but we knew it would take two days from where we were. After more pussy-footing along the track (17 kilometres in the first hour) we stopped for morning tea (well one must maintain standards). Three vehicles appeared from the south and rolled up to us with the brash confidence of the seasoned four-wheel driver. They were from South Australia and were just on some casual bush bashing holiday and were keen to power off to get to Warburton. We finished our break and resumed our careful slog. About 5 kilometres up the road we passed them again – they were off the road as one vehicle had broken his steering rod. In true Monty Python style the driver told us that he had “had worse” – we pressed on with steely resolve (I didn’t even know you could break a steering rod – another thing for me to worry about). We had identified potential camps at around 44 kilometres and 71 kilometres on our trip the day before, and we arrived at the latter campsite at around 1.15 pm. The consensus was to rest up and drive the last 50 kilometres tomorrow, and it was quite a good camp site. The bit of plate that we had wired up under the X-Trail had broken off so we unhitched it and hoped the remaining plate would behave itself tomorrow. I was wondering how much of the vehicle we had left behind on the trail and how much we would bring into Warburton.

Chest-high grass just ready for harvesting!

Connie Sue vista

It was cold - damn cold!

We distinctly wrote..."Help!!!"

It was another cold desert night. We woke up to ice deposited on the windscreens. Today was Connie Sue’s last chance to give us a good spanking and she didn’t let us down. We had to negotiate a few washaways; one of these we had to fill in with dirt before I attempted to cross it (shovel, shovel). We came unstuck again where the Bloodstone track spilled into the Connie Sue and vehicles entering there had left the soft sand all churned up. We put two recovery tracks under the left-hand wheels and did some gardening up further in order to maintain momentum to get through. A hairy section of river gravel tested us out after that but then we were veritably cruising on the Great Central Road – wide and graded and smooth (10 kilometres from Warburton)! We were very glad to see the Warburton Roadhouse even though in another Universe one might drive right by it without seeing it at all. From the road it’s basically a roadhouse and a caravan park enclosed in barbed wire fencing, so not your friendliest looking structure. I was so glad that the X-Trail had got us through – it is one tough little vehicle.

 

Just a small bogging this time...

 

We booked two nights at the caravan park and rang Scott (who turned out to be the local mechanic) to ask him if he could have a look over the vehicle. We really didn’t know how much damage that we might have sustained.  Scott was a nice young guy and a good mechanic. He has a steady stream of business particularly with government and contractor vehicles presenting with a variety of ills due to the country that they move around in and the speed that they insist on moving around in it (well they’re all leased vehicles aren’t they?). He fixed/modified my protector plate to shield the fuel tank from the exhaust pipe as best he could. I asked about the small oil leak we had noticed (Maurs saw it first - a small drop of fluid on the ground a few days earlier) – glumness! – there was a crack in the rear diff plate. Scott took my phone number and worked on possible solutions – two hours later we agreed to bring the car in the next day and he would weld a repair (tricky because it is alloy material) if he could get the plate off easily (otherwise an epoxy job and nurse the car home). We spent the rest of the day with overdue washing and a shower (after 14 days – now that was welcome). We even bought some frozen meals at the roadhouse and microwaved them while watching TV in the big camp kitchen. We felt positively sophisticated! Warburton is an alcohol-free community so we made do with cups of tea and headed back to our campers in the cold desert air at around 9 pm.

Camped at Warburton Caravan Park

 

As it was Scott decided it would be way more effective to use epoxy on the diff rather than weld it. While we waited we took in the delights of Warburton. A visit to the well-stocked General Store in the community itself was really interesting, and if you’re in the market for frozen kangaroo tails I reckon I now know where you can pick up a few. The Cultural Centre was also an interesting place, highlighting local artists in the gallery there with some very nice pieces.

 

Warburton Art Gallery at the Shire Offices

 

Twin snakes dominate the art and culture

Another depiction of the snakes



Rawlinna to Neale Junction and a bit beyond

Rawlinna to Neale Junction and a bit beyond

Calvin (the entire population of Rawlinna) had told us that the first 80 kilometres of the Connie Sue was a “bit rough” so we reasoned (somewhat stupidly) that it must smooth out a bit after that. He didn’t mince his words – the first 80 kilometres was bone-jarringly rough as we wound around the larger rocks, went over the smaller rocks and suffered hits to our undercarriage from the rocks that we thought were smaller but turned out not to be. The surrounding countryside was basically a part of the Nullarbor Plain so was largely bereft of significant vegetation and it was interesting to see the quite rapid transition as we entered more wooded country about 40 kilometres up the track. It was such hard going that the X-Trail remained in second gear just about all the way. Then the trouble started! While negotiating the rocks on the track around 30 kilometres out of Rawlinna I noticed a warning light come on the console. Was this Nissan’s little way of saying “I hope you have a nice day”? Maurs checked out the symbol in the driver’s manual – apparently it was the diesel particulate filter light telling us “I am clogged” - the solution? – simple! – “burn off the particulates by driving the vehicle above 60 km/h until the light goes out”. Yeah that’ll work! With little prospect of getting over 20 km/h anytime soon we chugged along hoping like hell that the filter didn’t choke up completely. Our electrical connections weren’t faring much better. The Anderson plug that supplies power to the camper kept separating as we ran over thick bushes so I disconnected all plugs to the camper to avoid any permanent damage (and I figured that no one would be looking for a right hand turn indicator light for the next 700 kilometres anyway).

Lunch - slightly off road

 

Trackin' on the Nullarbor

 

In winter, night falls quickly out in this part of the world so by 3 pm we were looking for a campsite and that’s where our first day on the Connie Sue ended, 80 kilometres up the track (and yes Calvin, it was a “bit rough”) – we had taken 5 hours to travel that distance so we had averaged 16 km/h. It was time to lick our wounds (first blood to Connie Sue I’d say) and prepare for Day 2, well Day 3 actually. It was a good campsite and we needed to recharge our 12 Volt battery systems with our solar panels, plus we weren’t particularly in a hurry to get anywhere. We had great campfires both nights and set off the next day confident of a better ride.

Celebrating the first day

Oh the camping life!

Red sky at night...

Ah the camping life!

Gus tending the fire

 

We encountered our first camel, a beast we were assured there was no shortage of in this country. It did the non-sensible thing and plodded along the track ahead of us rather than get off. They like roads! Who wouldn’t? Eventually we were able to influence its trajectory sufficiently that it turned off (probably for a well-earned rest).

Off the road big fella!

 

About 10 kilometres in we came across three road workers dressed in the obligatory high-vis clothing and big hats perched in front of a wide expanse of pretty good looking road. Was this our salvation? Had someone actually fixed the Connie Sue? I wasn’t sure if the guy was being humble about his road-repair skills or not when he told us the road was a bit patchy and bull-dusty. We took off. It turned out to be a bit patchy and bull-dusty and we tried every possible side of this (quite wide) road to find the best way forward. We didn’t really find it, but it was far better to take the stretch at speed than not. We got up to 70/80 km/h at times – and long enough to see the diesel particulate filter light fade from the screen at last. Well that was a small victory. Of course we lost complete sight of Kev and Shirley as we rode along in front of our own private massive dust envelope, but we found each other again as we got back to more “normal” road conditions. We came to a fork in the road where there was an open tin shelter and a water tank. The better looking road led to the Tjuntjuntjarra Aboriginal community – the shitty road was the Connie Sue Highway. We stopped to read the tank messages (the tank was a bit like a corrugated iron Facebook device with various postings of local opinions such as “Buddy Franklin – Fuckin’ Legend” and interesting news of recent liaisons between various individuals. We took the opportunity to top up a jerry can with water (we had a two-tiered system for water – “drinking” water and “bath/dish” water kept in segregated containers – this lot we designated as dish water, but only because we didn’t really know its quality) and continued our date with Connie Sue.

Connie Sue Notice Board

 

About 200 metres up the road we came across a dead camel sprawled across the track (not sure why it chose the road as its preferred place to stop drawing breath but I suspect it suffered from abrupt lead poisoning, possibly at the hands of someone less patient than us as it sauntered up the track rather than heading into the bush) – it would not be the last dead camel we would have to skirt around either. Another ominous sight just off the road was a sprinkling of charred, stripped vehicles indicating that not everybody has a successful transit of the Connie Sue. The road continued to be okay and we stopped for lunch and to collect firewood prior to arriving at Neale Junction (there are advisory notices to bring your own wood to the Junction as previous happy campers over the years had stripped the area of burnable stuff; plus it is a Nature Reserve so you can’t go burning off all of the Nature). The road deteriorated about 30 kilometres out of Neale Junction reducing our speed and dimming our hopes of an earlier arrival.

Why die there!!

 

We rolled into Neale Junction mid-afternoon. There was nobody there but 4WD groups had generously provided facilities such as an open iron shelter and lunch tables, a water tank, fireplaces and a toilet – all of which were greatly appreciated. We stayed there for two nights and although it was cloudy, windy and cool, we were quite comfortable. On the second morning Maureen and I walked to Len Beadell’s iconic data plate, read and signed the travellers’ book, and posed for photos in a light rain. We heard a deep rumble coming out of the east and sure enough there appeared a 4WD Land Rover, although it looked and drove more like a Panzer tank. This made sense when we discovered two Germans in it. They actually lived in New Zealand and had the Panzer shipped over for the invasion – sorry, tour. They were travelling the Ann Beadell Highway (runs east-west) to Laverton and then planned to tackle the Canning Stock Route. No easy road in life for this intrepid couple. They seemed unfazed by anything, and their preparation appeared to be impeccable. I reckon if there was ever a nuclear holocaust the only living things left on Earth would be cockroaches and them. They also belonged to the slow-but-sure school of traveller and after a brief but friendly conversation plodded off towards the west at a brisk 20 km/h on a stretch where even I might have taken it up to 40 or 50.

Bit of solar action happening

Len Beadell's Plate - Neale Junction

Neale Junction campsite

ze Panzer departs for Laverton

As Neale Junction is the halfway point for the Connie Sue and a convergence with the Ann Beadell track an enterprising gent named Andy has left a supply of business cards there offering to come out to retrieve any poor unfortunate city slicker whose vehicle has happened to die in situ. Andy is based about 350 kilometres away in the town of Laverton and although no prices were mentioned on the card, you just knew that if you had to make the call to Andy you could expect your arm and your leg to automatically separate from your body as payment for the recovery (I took his card, by the way – unlike Maurs I refused to be confident of the X-Trail completing the journey unscathed, and if you do happen to become stranded in that remote area you would be very happy to see Andy turn up to get you out of there – and what’s an arm and a leg anyway, hey, we’ve got two of each!).

 

Who ya gonna call?!!

 

As it happened, on the very next day I actually had visions of grabbing the satellite phone and dialling Andy’s number and in a voice of abject resignation say, “Andy, come and get me, and yes my arm and leg are prepped and ready for removal!” as we faced our biggest challenge –a sand dune of enormous proportions. It looked so high it could have been snow-covered on top (well that’s how it looked to me). Kev and I walked the obstacle, doing a bit of smoothing of the track to ensure the best possible path before I, with not much confidence but a lot of determination, tore off up the hill.

Kev and Gus considering the challenge

The little Nissan answered the call and zoomed up to the top. “OMG” I whooped out loud, even though I was alone in the vehicle, “I’m a city slicker and I think I’m actually going to make this!” I had veritably sailed up over that massive steep dune, camper in tow, and then just over the top of the hill, the car sank miserably into the soft sand and stuck fast. I sat there, engine silent. I may have sobbed a little. Thereupon the four of us began the task of extricating the Nissan from the bog. It took three hours! Shirley came up to me at one point and said “Are ya havin’ fun yet Uncle Gaz?” I told her that no, I wasn’t and got back on my belly, shovelling loose, wet sand from underneath the chassis while light rain continued to fall on my head. With the aid of our recovery tracks and a lot of hard work we finally got free. Kevin and the Pajero made it up and over without incident. We drove to a new campsite, not a great piece of real estate as it looked like it could get boggy very quickly if it started raining, but we had little choice. We lit a nice campfire, and cooked a meal. As I licked my wounds in front of the crackling fire, I imagined Andy at his place four hundred odd kilometres away with a wan smile on his face, sitting with can of beer in hand in front of his fire, perhaps a couple of American Pit Bulls lying at his thonged, unwashed feet, patiently waiting for my call…that never came!

Nearly made it

Only one way out of here

Enjoy some floral tributes while we get the car out of the bog

 

And then, as if on cue, it started raining.

 

Lenticularis clouds

The Connie Sue Highway - getting there

The Connie Sue Who?!!

The Connie Sue Highway is an ill-named 4WD/goat track that stretches some 630 kilometres from a ghost town called Rawlinna on the Nullarbor Plain in Southern Australia, due north to Warburton, a small aboriginal community. It was built in 1962 by an extraordinary man named Len Beadell in an effort to provide access through the big nothing of Central Australia to areas involved in the nuclear/rocket testing program of that time. By all accounts Len was a pretty funny guy and naming this track a highway was probably hilarious; not to say that it was not a fantastic engineering achievement – he was a superb surveyor – and it probably wasn’t his fault that no one had bothered to run a grader over it in the ensuing 56 years. He named the road after his daughter Connie Sue who actually accompanied her parents on the journey as an 18 month old baby. Apparently he placed a wooden tea chest in the centre of his Land Rover and packed it with wadding as a cot-come-car seat for baby Connie Sue to travel in – and this over basically unexplored country in which he was trying to forge a thoroughfare for people to travel in relative comfort. I’m guessing this occurred to the astonishment and concern of modern day road safety experts sporting close shaved beards and sockless comfortable shoes, but sometimes one can overcome the odds without “approved” and compulsory equipment.

A rough map of our trip area
 

A fundamental problem in tackling this stretch is that it’s hard to know just what the road is like at any given time as it can change so quickly and information is at best sketchy. The local Shire describes conditions succinctly on its website as either “Open” or “Closed”, but even being “open” doesn’t mean one can sail happily along it without incident, and by the time the authorities get to know that the road is “closed” it’s probably really open again. We were going to attempt this trip two years ago but aborted in the face of a very wet winter (we had seen vision taken by other travellers of what an inland sea the road could be in wet years). Nevertheless we persisted in our planning and last June the Returds and intrepid bushies Kevin and Shirley meeting in the city of Kalgoorlie with our campers in tow to travel this piece of inland history. For some intrepid four-wheel-drivers this road is a bit of a “rite of passage” to attain some 4WD bragging rights, and I should say here that some travellers on the Connie Sue attempt the trip in jacked-up, souped-up Four Wheel Drives blasting along at speeds of 80 to 100 km/hr, jinking over the terrain in order to tick it off their bucket list in two days, prepared to incur any amount of subsequent damage to their vehicles and their lower backs.

We on the other hand allowed about 12 days for the trip – we wanted to see the countryside and we wanted to make sure that we had most of our vehicles with us when we got there. We had a few logistical problems to overcome – fuel, water and food being the uppermost ones as we had to carry all of that with us – there is no road house, no store on the 1000 kilometre journey from Kalgoorlie to Warburton. So with a sumptuous 65 litres of diesel in the tank, 90 litres of diesel packed on the roof in 10 and 20 litre jerry cans, 100 litres of water, a big mess of dehydrated vegetables that Maurs had systematically prepared from fresh, and the teensiest amount of alcohol we set off for the Connie Sue. Kevin and Shirley had similar commodities and quantities packed into their Pajero plus a satellite phone in case of trouble (but what could possibly go wrong?)

Looking east along the Trans Access Road

The road to Rawlinna on the Trans Australian Rail Line started out as a well behaved road up to the Mount Monger turn-off (that’s a mine site) but then it turned to gravel which got progressively worse as we went along but we made the 375 kilometres leg in two days. We made camp on the first night at a rail siding named Zanthus – a word that had caught my attention in the 1980s when I was an aviation weather forecaster and was scratching to find places to use to describe weather boundaries for light aircraft operators in an area where there is not much. There’s not that much at Zanthus now – just the siding and a dump which funnily enough offered the best prospect for a camp site for the night. Actually we identified it as a camp site before we noticed it was a dump and as a dump it was a pretty good place for a one night stay.

 

Zanthus to Rawlinna was 175 kilometres of quite rough road with stretches of potholes and corrugations and at times we were reduced to about 30 km/h. The harder going took a toll with fuel consumption in Kev’s Pajero and we stopped about 20 kilometres out of Rawlinna to top up with a jerry can of diesel. We took a small diversion on the outskirts of town to visit the area where the annual Rawlinna Muster is held. It’s quite an expanse with good facilities and apparently the event attracts thousands of people from far and wide with a rodeo and country bands, and some drinkin’! It was deserted so we drove into town. It was equally deserted, however after a while we were able to say hello to the entire population (his name was Calvin and he was a roo shooter) – a really nice guy who pointed us to a suitable place to camp. He said he was leaving the next morning so we would have the town to ourselves, but he stopped short of presenting us with the keys to the city.

 

 

We set up camp and were relaxing with a drink around our small campfire when we saw lights on the horizon. These lights eventually turned into the Indian Pacific (I-P) train which glided into Rawlinna remarkably silently, coming to an abrupt stop. This icon of rail transport plies between Sydney and Perth and we discovered that it stops at Rawlinna for a candle-lit dinner experience for the passengers in the summer (drinks and canapes in the winter) once a week, and we were lucky enough to be there to see it. We abandoned our camp and wandered up to the train siding. It had been magically decked out with lanterns and a sprinkling of warming fire places. We asked how we might procure a drink and the event manager said we were welcome to a glass of wine or two if we could hang around after the train pulled out and help Faith (from a local sheep station) put away all the equipment. So glass in hand we proceeded to meet the passengers like we were local tour guides, pointing out the benefits of the carefree camping life and asking if they would recommend a trip across the Nullarbor on the I-P (thoroughly recommended it seems – we must do it one day). There was live music, wine and great conversation with some interesting people but that all ended at 7.45 pm when the train swept out of Rawlinna as silently as it arrived. We honoured our pledge to help Faith (it was hard not to as she was visibly pregnant and there was a lot of stuff to stow away). She lived 50 kilometres away and thought nothing of travelling this distance to set up for the I-P event. Now most of us had the polite two glasses of wine however one of us, in a disgraceful exhibition of indulgence had four (that he would admit to) with the result that he lost his glasses and the group spent time looking around the station the next day in a vain attempt to find Kev’s glasses (sorry Kev, that just slipped out).

The Indian Pacific waiting to disgorge passengers for a night under the stars.

 

So Rawlinna was a bizarre little town. Its other claim to fame was that it sported a flushing public toilet, once you fought your way through the maze of spiders’ webs to the bowl and hovered over the seat (I never said that it was a scrupulously clean and maintained toilet) – but nevertheless much appreciated over the alternative. The level of amazement continued when we awoke after our Indian Pacific experience to the sound of a horse nuzzling around outside our campers. She was unbridled, unaccompanied, had brush hanging off her tail and was very inquisitive about our camp. She seemed quite tame, liked a pat on the nose and hung around us for quite a while. In her sampling of the camp facilities, she decided to have a drink from our washing up bowl that we left out. Unfortunately we couldn’t tell her that it was soapy water but she found out anyway and bared her teeth in disgust. Just when we thought we might have to file adoption papers she took off and the last we saw of her she was galloping over the railway tracks and into the bush, presumably back to her owner. We took the opportunity to fill our water containers, and conducted a self-guided tour of the old Trott house (a national trust building decomposing onto itself with no prospect of doing anything else). One more night around the Rawlinna campfire and we were as ready as we would ever be to tackle the Connie Sue Highway.

Our mystery horse (friendly though)

The Trott House - see it before it falls