7am 15.8 degrees. The sun is starting to rise and the birds and dingoes are singing in unison. Everyone else has already risen and hit the road. There is a cloud band in the west otherwise the sky is clear and no wind. Only about 5 of us left as we start to pack up at 8.15am. Chatted with a couple with a slide on camper on a big truck made by Expedition Vehicles Aust for a while. They are heading south for the Finke Desert Races this weekend. They did the Canning Stock Route last year and said it was very overgrown from the two years of Covid when no one was allowed on the track.
We headed off up the highway just a short distance and turned off onto a gravel road. Info boards about the Binns Track (created by Bill Binns, a long-serving ranger with NT Parks & Wildlife - he wanted people to see and enjoy the lesser-known, but just as spectacular, sights across Central Aust and the Top End) and the Davenport Range National Park.
We are heading for Kurundi Station which has the Kurinelli Goldfields.
We came here last year in March but we were too early and the fossicking area wasn’t open yet. We ended up going into the Davenport Range National Park and staying at Whistleduck Creek but the grass was very high everywhere. Ray and Carol called in last year on their way back from seeing us in Halls Creek (August) and had a nice couple of weeks here. They met up with another couple from Darwin then and are camped with them again so we will camp with them too.
Dropped air out of the tyres then headed off on the gravel road. Lots of budgies flew off from the grass. We heard a call on the VHF - one chap saying, ‘the 6 wheeler has gone’. Steve answered that we were just down the track. They were a group of guys that came in late last night, on their way down to the Finke too. They were impressed with the truck and just wanted to know more about what Steve had done.
The track is quite corrugated but not as bad as we have been on recently on the east end of the Gary Junction Road. It is nice and green as we roll up and down the hills, running parallel with the Kurundi Branch Creek.
The Murchison Range came into view as we near the homestead.
The Saint family have owned the station for years and now the son and his wife are running it. We topped up with diesel ($2.15/L) and chatted with a backpacker who came over from Cairns a month ago. Mrs Saint signed our fossicking form and gave us a map. They are unloading some new cattle nearby so pointed out where they didn’t want us to go while the cattle got settled.
We continued on, crossing Kurundi Creek on the causeway where the water was just flowing over from recent rain.
The track has been graded for the cattle trucks. We pulled off for a cuppa by Kurundi Waterhole.
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43km from the homestead to the turn off to the fossicking area. We caught up with a vehicle towing a caravan before the turn off so just hung behind them far enough back out of his dust. He turned off down the track too so it was a slow trip down to the cattle yards where we turned left. They stopped to go through a gate - chaps from Victoria that have been coming here for years. They said they had driven up from the south and got caught in that storm we got the edge of at Alice Springs. They got the full force, hail and rain! Our group were further along the fence line so we continued on and found the track into where they are camped.
No one was in camp so we chose a spot. Had lunch then offloaded the camper. The truck springs can have a rest for a while.
The other came back after 3 so we caught up on the news and met Anthony and Jen and their son Dutch. We gave them their groceries and grog then settled down for drinks and chatted.
They have been coming here for a long time and this is the first time the grass has been so high. Last year this ground was bare so it was easy to see the windrows etc. We watched the red sun set through the trees and then a red moon rose (smoke haze) on the other side.
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