On the Road to Lawn Hill Gorge

On the Road to Lawn Hill Gorge
1st September and 2nd September

It looked to be too far for a two day trip, so we spent the morning in Alice. After lunch, and well provisioned, we drove north up the Stuart Highway. The Stuart really is a pretty dull road apart from the devils marbles where I spotted a crimson finch.

From On the Road to Lawn Hill Gorge

We often stopped to look at birds of prey and eventually nightfall and an afternoon storm halted us at Wycliffe Well, a quirky caravan park claiming to be the UFO centre of Australia. It also had caged emus, galahs and rabbits; a couple of donkeys, a lake (actually a dam), a miniature train, and murals on every semi-flat surface. The kids tried fishing in the ''lake'' but it turned out to have been recently fitted with plastic dam liner and had only just started to be filled again. So there probably were no fish and all Fabian caught was the dam liner. We travelled towards Tennant Creek and bought a few things, sent a parcel to the primary school (some prints the kids had done) then drove on. That night we stopped at the Sudan Bore rest area – just a place to sleep in the middle of the Barkly tablelands.

When we reached Camooweal Next G coverage appeared, so we stopped for the morning as I needed do some work. The general store had a cafe, making it very comfortable.
The couple running the store had just moved up from Gosford and seemed to be running a great service for the whole community including banking and postal services, legal advice and good quality foods. Then after lunch we struck out on the gravel Camooweal Rd up towards Lawn Hill Gorge. It was a bit rough and was taking longer than we thought, but we were going ok until Fabian heard a strange noise which turned out to be a flat tyre. Well it was only a matter of time. The tyres that came with the car were really not made for the sharp rocks on these roads. We got it changed fairly smoothly and back on the road but the spare burst, torn from tread to rim not much later. With the sun going down, I unwrapped the tyre repair kit I had bought and started reading the instructions. Amazingly it worked. Maggie cooked dinner at the back while me and the kids and I got the shredded wheel off and repaired the first flat.

From On the Road to Lawn Hill Gorge

A passing camper let us use their compressor to speed up the inflation of the repaired tyre. I drove very gingerly on the last 10 or so km to Lawn Hill Gorge – we no longer had a spare wheel!
We end up arriving at Lawn Hill about 9pm – which meant a challenging set up.