THE KIDSON TRACK Part 2

We set out again on Tuesday morning. Three vehicles, five people and a dog. We repeated the blacktop section and had lunch at Pardoo. A further 90km and we reached the turnoff and were welcomed by a nice little gully about twenty metres into the track.

There were five hundred kilometers of rough driving into a lonely and empty desert to go. It took around 14 hours of hard driving to get through the track. That was on top of three hours getting to the start and another two after we left the track.

Off we go again

Most of the track can be handled at around 40-60 kmh but at washaways it was very very slow. The vehicles tilted alarmingly and at times it was necessary to leave the track and make a new one through the bush beside the impassable gully which had been part of the track. Out there the vehicle is life. If it breaks and you are on your own it is often fatal.

 
 

Let's take this carefully.

It is not possible to see the most numerous lifeform in the desert. They are at the bottom of the food chain and without them none of the reptiles or pirds of prey could exist. They are the termites. Their mounds are everywhere and each one annually consumes approximately the same amount of spinifex as one head of cattle. There are large dry areas with few mounds and great numbers where the soil is damp.

 

A herd of termite mounds

At one point we saw a sign on the side of the road. As we got closer it looked like a cutout kangaroo standing up tall. As we got within twenty metres of it, it hopped away! It has so looked like just a big sign we couldn't believe it. A pity the camera was not ready. That was the only sign of life we saw all day, except for birds and lizards. The track was closed in by six foot tall acacia shrubs but every now and then they would thin and as we crested a rise we could see forever.

Acacias coming into flower.

This really is a magnificently huge country. On the horizon there were occasional ranges to be seen but the track ran along a fairly flat route. Because of the recent rains the spinifex was green and the rolling countryside looked like great farming country. The eyes are easily fooled. The ground was a gibber plain and the vegetation would probably sustain one head of cattle per hundred hectares (about 450 acres).

 
The feed wouldn't last long

except for this bloke

      
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