Mount Augustus

We were now on our way to Mount Augustus National Park a further 269 km away. We headed north after leaving the Kennedy Range National Park access road. 

The Ullawarra Road would take us past Mount Sandiman towards Mangaroon Station before turning east past Gifford Creek and Cobra Stations before entering the national park.

The drive took five and a half hours to complete and was very rough with many sections of quite bad corrugations, with numerous flood-ways.

All the flood-ways had a mixture of heavy corrugations before and after, with rough and rocky bases.

We caught our first glimpses of Mount Augustus from 45 km away. Its twice the size of Uluru but is covered in greenery unlike Uluru which is totally nude. 

During our stay at Mount Augustus, we experienced strong and gusty winds so decided against doing the summit climb, however, we did the 46 km loop road that runs around its base to visit the smaller tracks and sites.

The campground is privately owned and just outside the national park. It is part of  Mount Augustus Station which covers more than 1.25 million acres and was established in 1887. 

We chose to camp in the non-powered section for $22 per night. 

There is also a lovely grassed area where you camp that has power, the only stipulation is no wheels on the grass.

Wiki Camps have the following services listed here which include a dump point, drinking water, mobile and internet coverage. This is incorrect with none of these facilities available. Diesel fuel was available at $1.75 CPL which I thought was acceptable.

Cattle Pool is a permanent pool on the Lyons River and is a real surprise in this very dry and harsh country. It attracts corellas and many water birds and both sides contain huge river red gums.

We left Mount Augustus heading south through the aboriginal community of Burringarrah, and down past Landor Station who were holding their annual picnic races.

From here we turned west past Dalgety Downs before joining the Carnarvon Mullewa Road as we continued further south. 

This road continued to be quite a good road with only minor corrugations and the occasional bull dust hole. It was certainly nothing like the road conditions we had encountered from Kennedy Range. 

We stopped for lunch at Bilung Pool. Another surprise in this arid landscape. Drovers spent months bringing cattle and sheep down from the De Grey and Ashburton areas to markets in the south and this spot was a real oasis along the way. Apart from water for the stock, this spot would have been a pleasant place to spend a few days.

Well 19 was part of a series of wells dug along the stock route to provide water every 12 to 20 kilometres.  A total of 52 were dug and each well was capable of watering 3000 sheep or 300 cattle. This particular well was dug to a depth of 33 feet.

By the time we reached the Murchinson Roadhouse, I was ready to call it quits for the day. $15 for a non-powered site and camped on lovely green grass made for a very welcome change.