Well 33

Fuel Stop & Showers Up at 5.30am. Easterly gale blowing the side of the tent in over Meg. Should have set it up with back into the wind last night. 9.45 Departed camp at 8.45. Decided to get back to CSR by travelling to Thring rock and on the track past it that led back to CSR. A few hundred yards down the track to Thring Rock we found the main camp site which was better sheltered. Big patches of desert varnish on the gibber plains near the rock. (dark shiny coloring on the top of the soil and rocks)Took photo at Rock. I thought of Frank Thring: great ham actor and sometime poncy queen, but a "way out front" great guy for Melbourne in the 1950s and 1960s. "Good on ya Frankie!" Thring Tk rejoins the CSR in about 4-5 km on an easy round robin track. 8.15 3-4 bustards seen in scrub. Lots of protected floral dunes. Colors varied and magnificent. Magenta, yellow-green, blue grey, blue-green (several different shades), lime green of new Spinifex plumes & cushions, silver plumes, dark green of casuarinas, silver greens, grey-greens, yellow Grevilleas. Note the 2 tone rule, ie only light and dark on each color, not 3 or more intermediate tones. Try to get a new edition of guide book: CSR, A Travellers Guide, by Ronele Gard(Eh ?) 8.50 Off the sand dunes and onto wide flat plain - soil lighter and high shrubs crowding both sides of the track. Mirrors In! and lots of scratches to the cars. Some had put painted coatings or a plastic film on their car. This appears to work but is a lot of trouble. (NOTE: Earlier a passing convoy was heard to comment over the radio Did you see the condom car?) 9.05 Going through a bloodwood forest Some have galls caused by a sap sucking grub that burrows into the bark and lives there permanently sucking food from the tree sap. Lots of prostrate mulla mulla that looks silver/white with the low morning sun back lighting it. Low yellow wattles about 50 cm high, spinifex and tall trees (40m), This is just south of well 30, but no camping possible here in forest because of the dense spinifex. 9.15 Arrived Well 30. Ruined with some residual bits of rusty metal bits strewn around it. Good spot for lunch or morning tea.Bloodwoods surround it. They are lightly spread in spinifex scrub ie 30 -50 mt apart. Departed well at 9.20. Sandy scalloped sand dunes follow well 30. OK but less comfortable driving than the track between wells 29 and 30. Scrub varies from dense one mt shrubs to 1-2 metre. Also low 20-30 cm cushion shrubs. Lots of rock ledges on track here rather than sand dunes between wells 30 to 31. 10.15 Nurgurga native well. morning tea. Well on R of track. Nice camp spot for 5-6 cars about 1km in on R. Could not locate native well and departed 10,35. 10.50 Our brave little orange dune flag struck off its pole by whippy branch. Later picked up by following car. Still travelling between similar scrub to previously described. 11.10 Arrived well 31. Quite nice camping here and at the tin-drum- marked turn off. Nice groups of white gums. Departed well at 11.20. Waited near turn off for south bound group to come into well 31, radio chatter told us they were confused by directions as to where to turn off the CSR to get to well. It's a 5km long track off the CSR turning R off the track. Take another R turn at a tin drum marker; its then another 1 km to the well. We met them on the track Three cars one with a Kimberly camper. Another traveler flagrantly disregarding the ban on camper trailers! 11.50 Single south bound vehicle travelling light. Corrugations starting to appear on the tk through open plains. These rapidly became worse. 12.10 Carpets of pink Pimelia. 12.30 Still on wide open plains with lots of pink and yellow low shrubs and spinifex, pink Grevillea and Blue bush. 12.35 Arrived well 32. Lunch stop. Departed 1.05. 2.00 Turned off CSR and arrived at Kunawaritji Community store and fuel stop. Accommodation also available in new pleasant cabins. Shopped at well set up store, did our washing in the guest laundry and showered. (Need to pay for these if you are not staying there-$8). Spoke to non-indigenous managerswho are running a very good set up and rebuilding all the visitor facilities. Only about 40 Aborigines live there and appear to live in neat houses. Area is very well tended and tidy. Left for a nearby camp site. 4.00 Arrived well 32 about 5 km down the road from the community. A very large and quite open campsite. We strung up a clothes line between the windmill and our car and hung out our wet washing. Eventually we had 3 lines up and shared them. Campfire and pleasant night. About 6-8 other cars there for the night.This is an exit point at crossroads for the eastwards locations of Gary Junction and Windy Corner and westwards to Marble Bar.

Well 30