Time warped or stretched or shrunk or something, while we were out on the Great Central Rd. To get from Laverton to Yulara in 3 days, which was the condition of the permit, we had to cover about 350km per day, and it seemed to take us most of the day.
We did take it easy, and made plenty of stops, including at each roadhouse to either fuel up or check out amazing artworks. We also stopped for a few quick wanders, like along any creekline oasis or out into the spinifex.
We got into our final campsite along the Great Central Rd about an hour before sunset. The country had changed after Warburton, into the Gibson desert. More breakaways and ridges and sand hills.
But our campsite was quite underwhelming at first. No interesting rocks or breakaways, just a flat expanse of sparse mulga country. But we weren’t going to drive any further so we set up camp, just us in all this vast quietness. Then walked over the road to at least four big gnamma quite full of water.
We could see a small sand dune in the distance, like so many we’d driven alongside of that day and so we strode off through the spinifex to reach it before we ran out of light.
There were subtle changes in the vegetation as we got closer and the ground became powdery fine orange brown sand. Enormous camel prints were interspersed with so many other fine tracks of (presumably) lizards and maybe some marsupials?
At the base of the dune we were surrounded by profusely flowering acacia and melaleuca bushes. And all kinds of fluffy, flannelly desert flowers that we didn’t recognise. Instead of the smell of dry dust, we were immersed in rich sweet scents.
This was completely and entirely different country from the bare, flat mulga just 1km away. There was so much life out there, but we just needed to look far more closely.
The sun set as we were still standing on the sand dune, and our walk back to camp was illuminated by the most outrageously beautiful desert sunset.
