Day 5 – September 5 2012

The wind steadily built through the night & by morning it was strong enough to blow a dog off a chain.  The lake had waves about a metre high crashing through the trees in the water then onto the sand, spray flying everywhere.  The wind wasn’t cold at all.  We all enjoyed this place, the waves were mesmerising. We decided to leave seeing it was so windy (we couldn’t really go for walks) so after packing went for a drive down to look at the main weir. There were rivers of sand being blown across the road, an amazing sight, I have never seen anything like it before.  Down near the weir in the sheltered areas there were multitudes of water birds, plus a few more nice free camp spots.  We stopped to re-inflate the tyres for bitumen road use, then off to Broken Hill.  We were punching straight into the wind, it must have been blowing at least 100km/h, with tumbleweed blowing furiously down the road & a huge dust storm whipped up.  It felt surreal, driving into the dust storm with a very strange colour filtered light, the low salt bushes & native grasses looked silver & gold, so beautiful.  We drove along behind a convoy of three Eco-Tourer vans, travelling at about 80km/h.  It was too dangerous to travel any faster, the wind gusts were extreme. If us grey nomads wouldn’t be on these roads they could close them.

We stopped at Broken Hill to refuel, both cars & people, then headed out the Tibooburra Road towards Mutawintji National Park.  The wind slowly swung behind us & made driving a little easier, still only 80km/hr though.  We had a great drive on the bitumen for about 100km, seeing lots of emus by the roadside feeding.  Then onto the dirt again, so tyre pressures down again, for the final 80km into Mutawintji.  We were travelling along nicely at around 60km/hr when the warning message came up on my dashboard telling me I had a flat tyre, so I stopped to check & sure enough, the driver’s side rear tyre was hissing air out.  It looked like a very sharp rock had pierced right through the tread.  So unpack the back of the car, out with the spare, fit it, then repair the tyre with the tyre repair kit I have.  The tyre took two plugs to fix as it was a decent gash.  When I pumped the tyre up again it appears that the leak has been fixed.

The rest of the trip into Mutawintji was uneventful so we selected a spot in the campground & set ourselves up.  Then off to the showers, amazing, this out of the way place has solar hot showers, so Tereza & I indulged & washed off five days’ worth of dust – sheer luxury.  Dinner & bed with the sound of the galahs & cockatoos squabbling for roosting sites amongst the many trees at the campground.  Emus are just wandering amongst the campers.