Northwards Once More (To an Astonishing Spot)

After an action-packed two nights in Gascoyne Junction, Michael's triumph was complete. His MacGyver impersonation paid dividends and the water tank repair was successful. With plenty of water back on board, we were ready to resume our adventure.

The Kennedy Ranges were already visible on the horizon. The remains of an ancient seabed that rose high above the landscape, then eroded away to form a seventy-five-kilometre long plateau in a north-south orientation.

On the Wool Wagon Pathway, I was thrilled to see the first white everlastings on the road verge. At Davis Creek, we stopped to marvel at the snippet of the cobbled road that was constructed in the 1920s to transport wool to the coast for export.

At the Lyons River crossing, we drove through the flowing water on the causeway and were amused by a herd of very relaxed cattle chewing their cud contentedly under the shade of the white eucalypts.

As we drove on, the magnitude of the Kennedy Ranges became evident. A soaring escarpment of sandstone was seemingly supported by massive buttresses to the earth. We could see the sheer cliffs and jagged ridges and a fantastic flat-topped mesa disappearing into the afternoon haze.

We suddenly felt rather insignificant...

Once we arrived at the Temple Gorge camping area, helpful volunteer host Andy assisted Michael park Digger in a picturesque site, which gave us an uninterrupted outlook to the majestic ranges just outside the caravan door.

Andy's wife Debbie stopped in her tracks when I was spelling our surname for her records. "Any relation to Michael?" she enquired. "He's the geezer in the 4WD", I responded. She had gone to high school with him and had last seen him at the Eastern Hills High School reunion in 2003...

After setting up our table and chairs in Digger's shade, we watched a pair of wedgetail eagles circling and climbing in the thermals above the ranges. Familiar tiny finches we had christened the "Beepers" in the Northern Goldfields appeared to have relatives living in the nearby trees. I could hear their bristling indignation rising in volume as I approached their position in the mulga scrub.

The campground continued to fill. The sounds of happy families drifted across to us as we sat marvelling at our surroundings. We checked the easier walks available to us for the morning - Honeycomb Gorge and Temple Gorge before we retired for the night.

In the meantime, we still had no hot water...