The night wasn’t as cold as they have been & we woke with the sunrise.  A check of the cars & vans before a healthy breakfast & packing of the Karavan for travel.  We were just leaving as our new German friends were emerging from their car.  The destination today was Wolfe Creek Meteorite Crater, another 340kms of the rough Tanami Track.  Our bicycle friend must have had a very early start as I saw his tracks for quite a distance before they disappeared around the next big mine, the Tanami Gold Mine.  The road was still as bad as the previous day, more corrugations, dust, water, etc.  We stopped after 125km when we reached the Western Australia border & had lunch, we finished all our salad vegies & fruit.  We gained 1 ½ hours extra time (or 2 hours extra to Canberra time).   Whilst we were eating & having a photo shoot, more cars pulled up for the same reason, including a family of German tourists.  The Tanami Track did not improve & some sections were even worse, travel became slow.  We passed another large gold mine, the Coyote, then we came across a recently wrecked Mitsubishi Pajero that had an accident & strewn everything out of the car as it rolled.  The car had been stripped of the motor & wheels & left on the side of the road (not off the road).  Interestingly it had a sticker on the back that said “I survived the Overland Track to Cape York”, it didn’t survive the Tanami.

The scenery was again spectacular at times, with the desert looking so green after all of the recent rain, the spinifex was in flower & the vast plains of silver spinifex seed heads waving in the sunlight was stunning.  Again the flowers on the bushes & trees are very pretty.

We finally reached the turnoff to Wolfe Creek & the 20kms into the crater was some of the worst road conditions so far.  The road was extremely corrugated & there was lots of water on the road.  We set up the vans when we reached the campsite at the crater then went for a walk.

The crater rim is an unassuming mound of rock dabbled with spinifex, however, once on the rim & looking into the crater, the sight is awesome. This is the first crater I have seen & it is amazing to see the round crater, steep sides leading down into it & the amount of green plant life inside the crater.  Normally this isn’t green.  There is a large circle of taller shrubs in the centre of the crater where water gathers after rainfall.  We walked down inside the crater & out into the centre where the salt is laying on the surface.  With no escape, the accumulated salt lays on the surface after the water evaporates.  The view from inside the crater is also magnificent, with the deep red colours highlighted by a setting sun against the steep sides.  Again, the plant life is so varied & the flowers are beautiful, many varieties I had not seen before.  The walk out of the crater with the loose rock was a lot simpler than the walk down into it.

The next agenda item was a shower for all, so up with the little shower tent, off with the clothes & a very quick wet down, soap, then rinse off was had by all.  It made us feel so much better.  The sunset was spectacular & the stars were again so clear and bright.

John put together a very nice Moroccan Lamb dinner & Tereza served up some Hungarian Lecso, followed by a nice cheesecake with sour cherry sauce.  Another good day, well shaken & stirred.