Day 5 - Yeo Lake Nature Reserve

Thursday, 3 June 2021

This has got to be the best gravel road and the least used in outback Australia, I quip as we glide further east on the smooth-as-fine-sandpaper White Cliff Rd. We haven’t seen one car in the two days we’ve travelled on the road, though we heard a couple while we were camped.

Still, it’s suspicious. A line of newly churned soil runs parallel to the White Cliff Rd. Officious signs hammered in every 30 metres: Gas Line: Call Before You Dig. Two mobile satellite stands tower over this low-lying landscape, 10 kms apart. They also look new, though our phones don’t register a signal. Where is the gas going? Who’s using phones way out here?

We meet the intersection of the Anne Beadell Hwy, one of Australia’s iconic outback tracks built in 1964 by Len and Anne Beadell. We’re looking at the map, engaged in our usual debate: I say yes, Johan’s not so sure. Suddenly a tap on Johan’s window. We haven’t seen anyone for two days so the image of a man, thirty-something with a cap and hoodie embroidered with a company logo, looking in at us is surprising. Johan looks in the rear view and opens the window. Oh sorry, am I blocking you? The man’s truck is parked directly behind us. Everything OK? the man asks, officious and sounding a bit like a cop. Yeah, yeah, just working out where to go. You’ll want to go up that road. The man points in the direction the White Cliff Rd has been taking us. Back to safety. Do you have a satellite phone? No. (Is it any of your business?) You gotta have a satellite phone out here. Things turn pear-shaped really quick. Dangerous territory. Follow that road back to safety. The young man doesn’t seem to register that he’s talking to people his parents’ age. But such seems a common attitude from young people toward their elders: anyone over the age of 60 is either dim-witted or demented. I suppose we were the same way when we were that age.

Have you been down that road? Johan points to the Anne Beadell Hwy. The man shakes his head, hasn’t a clue where that one leads -- but it’s not safe. Take the road back to safety, he insists. Another mammoth truck is heading our way, kicking up dust and trouble. The man made it clear this is mining territory, lots of trucks. Watch out. We own this territory. Get back to where it’s safe. The Great Central, the SAFE road for tourists.

We pull off the side of the road, then, to dodge the dust, take off down the Anne Beadell. We’ll just see how it is. Maybe aim for the first bush camp 40 kms in. If the road’s bad we can head up the Point Sunday Rd back to the Great Central.

The Anne Beadell Highway is as lovely as her name. A sweet red ribbon cut through untouched bushlands. Mostly its smooth but every so often it raises ruts and makes the car quake and shutter. I notice the lack of cow dung and the green sprouts on the bushes. Wilderness, at last.

We pass Point Sunday Rd and make it into the Yeo Lake Nature Reserve. The Yeo Homestead, an abandoned tin shed with several ramshackle out-buildings, includes a homemade shower made from an old water tank, with a door cut in. A bucket hangs from a beam in the middle and a rope attached to it allows the bather to tip the bucket of water over his head. We just took bush baths yesterday so no need for this novel invention. 

 

 

We head down a road that goes north from the back of the property. There’s supposed to be a dry lake back there, according to the map. The road is thin and scratchy on the car, but we take it slow, especially when the ruts get deep and wide. It ends not at a lake but a natural quarry of red granite and some sort of spooky white sedimentary, chalky to the touch. This will be a fine hideaway camp for the night.