We slept well. Maybe the tiredness of the multiple dune crossings, maybe just a day taken at a good pace. I awoke just before dawn and felt that there wouldn’t be many better opportunities to get a few snaps in. I headed out to the lake, where you can face due east and capture the remote beauty of an outback sunrise. Soon N came down to join me, it was cold and a slow process, but worth every minute.
Just when I thought, ‘that’s it, the sun is up it will just be normal daylight from now on’ ten minutes or so later we were bathed in pinky orange light for a short time. As the rising sun was filtered by something in the atmosphere. The camera was away by now but my phone did a reasonable job of capturing it.
Another through checkover of the Land Cruiser that morning, especially the tyres after running at low pressures all day yesterday.
Not to mention some highly fashionable choices in foot attire by me on that fresh morning…
We packed up and headed out. Only on the way out did we realise that we had been camping only half a kilometre from the young couples in the four trucks we had seen yesterday. Didn’t even know they were there, perfect. A friendly wave and we were on our way.
Overcast skies and a general easing of the challenge of driving meant we were more subdued this morning. We passed through an area that had seen a bushfire a few seasons ago and new growth showed with clarity, the Australian bush cycle of life.
We were to stumble upon one last wildlife treasure that morning though. Coloured like a fire itself.
N commented about how well I spot things in the track, but I don’t find it surprising, as if you are the driver surely you are looking pretty intently at where you are going and what is going under your wheels. It is one of the reasons I’m not such a fan on convoys, as you tend to switch off a bit and just follow the guy in front.
Whenever I seen someone hit a big rock at speed or stake straight through their tyre, I do wonder what they were doing with their eyes just before then? Of course you can’t have your eyes on the track 100% of the time, however…
Of course I’ve just jinxed myself good and proper now…
Fuel? In the end we did it easily. The Land Cruiser didn’t drink any more heavily in the soft dunes than it did pushing on the rough dirt road getting here. It also allowed me to get a good idea of what our proper off-road range (from the first section with bigger dunes) would be from both tanks (approx 600km).
As we stopped to air up at the start of the farm tracks, a 70 series with a slide on camper, all the fruit including two spares on the roof. Plus a Hilux looking factory fresh and still on Highway Terrain tyres pulled up. The driver of the 70 came over to chat excitedly “how was it?” “yeah great mate” “no problems with the dunes?” “The first big one defeated us at first attempt, but one I got the tyres pressures right, we were good from there. It’s a bit more chopped up in the direction you are going, but you’ll be fine” “exactly what pressures are you running?” Said 70 man – this is good questioning in my book, the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask right? “Stone cold this morning, 16 in the front, 20 in the rear, around 18/22psi now. We are heavy though, over 3 tonnes”, “thanks, we let ours down a bit for those corrugations back there, but we might have to let them down a bit more” he said, we chatted a bit more about the track. After we drove over the ‘corrugations’ they had aired down for, N smiled wryly at me. Safe to say they would have a good adventure on Googs Track. There are three types of surfaces on Googs Track, corrugations, dunes, and dunes with corrugations…
Heading out on the graded dirt roads, 80km/h felt like light speed. Back into phone and internet reception after 5 days in the bush. We txt’d our friends as planned to let them know we were safe, and a day early after skipping the extra night at Mt Ive. We hit the bitumen and took the short drive to the coastal town of Ceduna, not knowing yet that it would be our port in a storm…
