From salt lakes to Georgia Bore and Thring Rock

 With the morning light shimmering on the salt surface of Lake Disappointment, we enjoyed breakfast and packed up, ready for another day crossing the desert. The sandy track leading away from the lake soon changed to rocky stretches over vast plains, then back to sand tracks skirting low hills. Crossing some small salt pans, we came closer to the hilly country and the scrub closed in again.

Georgia Bore was a welcome sight, our main water tank was starting to get low, the past few wells were not good for water, so this would be an opertunity to top up.

Georger Bore is not a canning well, it is the legacy of a mining exploration camp. When the camp was no longer needed, the company equipped the bore with a hand pump, leaving it for the travelers and locals to source water, a very scarce resource out here.

Being a closed bore, the water can't get contaminated and is good drinking water. I put in about 70 liters into the tanks, a lot of pumping.

Well 24 was our next destination, a small pool of water from a spring refreshes the local wildlife. One wasn't so fortunate as the pile of camel bones attested to. Set amongst a grove of melaleuca, this spot makes for a pleasant camp. Honey Gravelia, flowering on the outskirts injected some colour. Stopping for the night, we enjoyed the surroundings.

Moving on the next day, we came to well 25, it sits on the border of a large clay pan. As you come onto the clay pan, the track you should follow was under water, others had followed the bank around to meet up with the track further on, so we did too.

Halfway around we spotted a form coming across the pan, splashing in the water. We stopped and observed. A wild dog, bounded towards us. Coming close, but wary, looking for food we thought, others had obviously fed him before. Continuing on, he followed us for some time.

Well 26 was our camp. As we rolled in, there were a couple of campers there already. A Japanese man came over to chat. He looked at the truck and said, how you get up the dunes? I have had problems with some. He and his small family had come from Japan, he said, just to do the Canning, they were going back to Japan when finished. Din pointed to Ned, he’s Japanese too she said, Mitsubishi, they laughed and laughed.

I told him the secrete is tire pressure, the lower you can deflate them the better. I can crawl up the biggest ones easy. You try it I said. Yes, he said, I will. Don’t know how they got on, but they were having a ball by the sound of him.

At this well, there was a plaque, honoring Alfred Canning, and a water tank displayed, that the camels carried. 

Next day, as usal, we were the last to leave camp. This, we like, we give the other travelers time to get a good way ahead of us if they are going in the same direction.

The dunes appeared again, steeper ones with big holes gouged out in regular intervals up the climb. Ned, however waddled up without a complaint, to cheers from us as we crested the bigger ones.

then we were crossing flat plains with wattle scrub pushing in on us. Soon the scrub disappeared as we came to a section which had been burnt recently, the traditional peoples burn off sections as a control measure, preventing large, hot fires in the dry season. The dunes looked bare with only thin sticks standing against the red sandy ground. Passing through this section, we were back to spinifex covered dunes and wattle bushes dotted with yellow flowers.

Before finding a camp site for the night, we passed through mesa country. The rocky outcrops rose out of the flat, stony ground, scattered about, some with flat tops and others cone like but all spectacular.

Then, as we climbed a dune and peeked over the top, Thring Rock dominated the landscape before us.

with its craggy outline against the desert sky, and dark recesses of its caves high on its slope, it was an impressive sight. This was to be our camp for the night.