Saturday 28th June, 2008
Hunt Oil Road WA
026 45 34.12 125 31 6.29
The Warburton worksite. Scotty jacking the trailer for the spring work.
The trailer modifications
We got up good and early as we had made the decision to drop to leaves out of
the springs on Scott's trailer the previous evening. While undertaking this venture, Scott found cracks in the welds of his trailer frame as
well. This prompted a mad rush back to
John's as we knew he was going hunting camels with the locals today. We also knew that one chap was meeting him at the workshop to pick up a tyre so Scott headed off to ambush him.
The Canadian camel whisperer!
The southern stretches of the Hunt.
In the mean time, Gaby took care of several loads of washing and I took the opportunity to re-jig everything in the Patrol. I reorganised the racsac on the roof creating enough room to fit the 5 jerry cans at the front of the roof rack. To facilitate spinifex protection I dropped the thematic fan out and covered the radiator with flyscreen and then refitted the fan. I stuffed the bottom bash-plate area of the bullbar with the left over mesh to prevent ingress of the spinifex seed from below. When Scotty arrived back having successfully located
John and getting the welding done, he wrapped shade mesh around the bull bar. I had a slow leak in the front left hand tyre which I located and plugged and finished off by fitting the sand flags to both vehicles.
The rocky knolls of our camp spot
We were clear and onto the grand central at just after noon. The vehicles were chockers with every drop of fuel we could possibly carry. We headed west down the GCR to the Hunt, covering the 126 kilometres in a couple of hours. We found the initial stages of the Hunt to be in excellent condition, not dissimilar to the
David Carnegie Road from last years trip.
Another perfect sunset
How long it would last we had no idea but it was still superhighway material when we finally pulled over for the day 20 kilometres later in the lee of a low range of rocky red rises. Just prior to this we had spent a bit of time watching a couple of mobs of camels who had been grazing right by the road. There were some ominous
grey clouds settling in as we pulled up and they provided a fantastic sunset. Dinner was one of those "Chicken tonight" type sauces with a few veggies and rice. Far too much red drunk by someone who fell off the ladder managing (thankfully) not to sustain to much damage to either person or pride. Laugh! It was a warm night due to clouds.