New day new experiences

Another lovely sunrise in the middle of the Hay River track. We are about 2/3 of the way through now and it is hard getting up and packing up and setting up each day but it is worth it to experience this. Today is the seven day mark and I can honestly say I am surviving the trip.

As we were leaving Rob had a diesel warning where the carbon needed to be burned off to do a regeneration. But this can not be done while we are 4WD here in the desert. Peter Wynd is a mechanic and was able to educate us all on the science of carbon mechanics - basically I have been educated in a whole new area of thinking.

We have had a trianchular in Peter's car and after the discovery of the world's biggest spider last night I am sure it won't be the last one we find today.

We have been discussing the indigenous history and culture today as we discovered that parts of the track have been burnt. Interestingly Lee and his while family have been made honorary members of an indigenous community. Lee has been able to share many interesting stories and has been fabulous at helping get people out of trouble. Today we have had Peter W and now Gary bogged. We are on the river bed and the sand is very soft making a seven car track quite messy for all - today we are car seven and at 12:30pm we will be using max tracks to enable Gary's car to launch off that and then get going.

Lake Caroline was such a huge surprise instead of water and lush green areas we were delighted to see yet another colour - black carbon or iron ore covered flood planes - an 11km stretch of reds, black, desert rocks and red dried mid flats. While we we're out there we were busy tracking camel foot prints and found camel beds too. With that were then offered lead car position where we were able to see a family of three. They were amazing and I only hope my pictures come up ok as they are on the good camera. Seeing camels in the wild was good and we certainly didn't expect that. Then to be asked to go up the front and be the car that scared them away was nice but at the same time sad because I knew we were why they were fleeing.

Camels before lunch and the again after lunch! This time we found a  complete skeleton on these left side of the track. It was amazing to see the size of the bones and the skull. 

This afternoon has seen us discover a dingo water hole where we were able to full up our 120L roof top tank with bore water. This way everyone will be able to have a shower if there are none at Batton hill when we get ther tonight. At 4;30pm we still have 70km to go so we need to keep moving and we lost quite a bit of time on the sand and filling up the tank. This has led to fuel discussions and I have just realised that we have 2 x 90L tanks in this Toyota land cruiser ute so this 4.5L V8 turbo diesal is coping brilliantly as are all of the cars regarding fuel capacity.

This is Paul filling up a weather bottle to take on the trip. I washed in the water but had second thoughts about drinking it, happy to wash and shower in it though!

So we have been driving north up the Hay River track now and we are on the last 60km

Sightings:

Mt Winkie 277m high named after Charles Winike who explored this region in 1883

Mt Smith 294m above sea level 

Mt Tiekens is the third mountain measuring 311m I think, getting teased for writing facts and blogging like a teacher.