We were woken about an hour before sunrise by a bird singing to its mate, a beautiful sound, then a ten minute walk to be up on the rim of the crater, to watch the sunrise.  The sunrise was magnificent, from the rim of the crater we could see from horizon to horizon in all directions – we are convinced that the world is flat!  The sky is a dome on top of it! The sun lighting up the spinifex plains & their silver seed heads & the white gums is just stunning.  We walked a third of the way round the rim of the crater to see the sun shining on the inside rim. It was time to head back for breakfast & to pack.

The 23km of road back out didn’t feel as bad as the way in to Wolfe Creek.  About 2km from the last gate nearest to the main road we came across a person bogged to the axles in mud.  He had made the wrong decision when he tried to go around the water.  We had a look to see if we could help him but he was well & truly stuck & needed a winch out, which neither John or I had on our cars.  The remaining 120 km on the Tanami Track to the highway was fairly reasonable dirt road, compared to what we had been on. There were only a few bad patches & we completed the Tanami Track without incident. When we drove on to the highway I thought we arrived in heaven – so smooth & quite.

We stopped at Halls Creek to refuel & have some lunch.  John took the opportunity to tighten up the wheel bearings on his new Vista off road van, as it was only a week old and had done some pretty hard travelling.  We checked the cars over then headed up the highway (nice smooth bitumen for a change) 120km to the Bungle Bungle turn off.

The road into the Bungles was very slow going, with lots of slow bumpy bends, up & over blind crests, twisting & turning plus a couple of deep bumpy creek crossings.  It took us around 2 ½  hours to complete the 50km into the visitor’s centre, then the additional 6km to the Kurrajong campground.  It was dark by the time we got there. We had to find a campsite in the dark & set up.  Dinner was again very nice washed down with a celebratory red as we had completed three significant achievements today, Wolfe Creek, the Tanami Track & the Bungles road.  On the track I sometimes wondered why we are doing this, at home we could be sitting in comfort watching Get Away on the big screen.   Amazingly, as we were setting up a camping friend we met in Alice Springs came over & greeted us, they had recognised our vans in the dark as we went past their camp sites.