Our plan for today was simple enough, up at 5, to be on the road by 6am. For some reason Steve and Ian misunderstood, and thought that the get up time was 6 with a getaway of 7. Once they heard the activity outside they rallied and got themselves organised in quick time, so we got away only a few minutes after the appointed time.
We have about a 5 hour drive with not too much in between, so coffee and breakfast at Macca’s it was before heading out of town toward Wiluna.
Easy drive to Wiluna mostly straight road and not too much traffic, mostly Road Trains, which I am not sure and unqualified to hazard a guess as to what they were. In my notes I put B-Quads, as they had 4 trailers connected to the prime mover, but there are different types see here. Maybe Doc can give me some clarification.
We arrived at Wiluna and realised that the best of the town was long gone. At one point, after gold had been discovered in March 1896 the population grew to more than 9,000 people by the mid 1930’s, this quickly reversed during and after WWII. The population is now about 300.
We had thought about staying at Wiluna before arriving there, but when we arrived we agreed that we should move on as there was no real reason to stay in the town and there was plenty of daylight left.
We once again filled up with diesel, this was it, the last fuel before Bililuna! The price for fuel was 179.9 cents p/l
The Canning Stock Route starts a few hundred metres west of town. Take the obligatory photos, then off to find the first well.
Well 1 was a little hard to find as it was off the track and signposting was minimal at the time we went through
Next stop point was Well 2 which has seen better days although there was some interesting history on the Canning Stock Route and the Aboriginal ties and history in the area.
After Well 2, we turned off onto the track proper, up to this point the CSR was still part of the Wiluna North Rd, which was not all that well maintained
The section to Well 2A was starting to get a little how we expected, the start of some corrugations and washouts with a few windy sections as well, but easy to navigate
The fun started from Well 2A as we headed off to Well 3. Granite and stones across the track as well as the start of the corrugations that we had read so much about that apparently span the distance of the track. Plenty of dry creek crossings. We took a big dive into a ditch that didn’t look all that bad about a K or so from Well 3, bent the number plate that was about the extent of the damage. So much bulldust (literally) here that we initially that we thought that it was steam and that we had a radiator problem – phew thankfully it was not that.
We travelled much further than we had anticipated today, so a little later, about 5ish as we pulled up to set up camp. This is our first night camping on the CSR, the first of many. All set up and first beers well before 6pm
Discovered our first albeit minor problem this afternoon, the fridge battery was not charging, we diagnosed the fault. Pretty simple really, one switch had been flipped the wrong way
Well 3 has been restored. This is the case with a number of wells apparently along the CSR. The earlier wells that we passed today were all pretty much in ruins.
