Carnegie Station
We missed seeing the next Beadell tree, but several of our group spotted it as we sped past. Len Beadell marked trees both with a eye to
posterity and more practically to attach tin plates to them for the graders following so that they could confirm they were on the correct line.
Although famed for putting in straight line roads, in fact he often diverged to pass close to an attractive feature in the landscape: a clump of
shade trees, an attractive view, an interesting hill or rock formation. In his books he explained that he expected lots of travelling tourists to
eventually use the roads as well as long haulers and cattlemen. He wanted to make their trips comfortable and interesting.
The vegetation changed remarkably to claypans with carpets of pink and white wild flowers and lots of trees. Quite spectacular country.
cassia bush, emu bush of various colors, wattle and early sturt desert pea were all flung together by nature looking like spectacularly
successful native gardens. Few gardeners would be so successful though in creating such aesthetic displays. We started to see the first
"snowdrops" - clusters of white flowers on stand-up stalks in small rounded clumps about 10-15cm high and lots of different types of
blue/mauve solenaceas.
There were lots of great campsites on this section of the road in amongst the trees. Other parts of the Gunbarrel Hwy
consisted of spinifex plains with some low bushes and an occasional tree here and there. In contrast the Mangrili
Claypan Nature Reserve was treed and full of flowers and worth spending more time than we had.We had morning tea
by a small lake near the road. It was full and had lots of birdlife amongst the trees. We found lots of blanks and chips
along its shores, so it has been a very old site of stone tool making. Small rounded rocks from the gibber plains were
everywhere and were used to create the tools. Was this area part of a glacial moraine? Oz was fully iced over many
millions of years ago. Were these water worn gibber stones carried by glaciers and dumped here as the glaciers started
melting? Clearly this lake has been a significant aboriginal site for a very long time.
Around 50 km further on we made a detour to drive to the top of Mt Nossitor. Terry and David drove to the top and parked. The rest of us
walked up. There was a trig point, good views and wildflowers at the top. Some sort of cairn with flowers apparently planted round it was
there.
The Gunbarrel Hwy improved into a well graded road after the edge of the Nature Reserve. Between there and
Carnegie Station we found easy driving. If you want to get to the Reserve again, its best to travel east to it from
Wiluna via Carnegie Station on the good road. We arrived at Carnegie Station at 3pm. This gave us plenty of time to
set up camp. The "Lone Traveller" was already there when we arrived. A new management team (of 2?) had recently
started work there. The camping area is run down. Ablutions block, kitchen and store needs a lot of work done to
bring it up to scratch; all is old, dirty and barely functional. One loo of the two didn't work in the women's loo and
shower block. It didn't flush and had frogs living in it! The shower block was dirty and needed repairs. The camp
kitchen was full of broken down stoves and had no running water for the taps. The table and chairs were OK, but we had to cook food on the
BBQ outside and bring our plates into the kitchen to eat.
We were back in cattle country and the flies & mosquitoes were abundant and persistent.
Despite the drawbacks the tent area had shady trees and lawns to pitch tents on. We felt we were back in civilization again. We needed an
early night as we planned an 8am start for the morrow.
Sun 24th july : 240Km