Surveyor Generals Corner

Hi Barry

You need to contact the NGAANYATJARRA COUNCIL, (08) 8950 1711 and they can email you a permit application. Cost is $100 per vehicle plus $20 pp, when you get there. We hope to go there in about a month, but will be going down from Warrakurna. You may have trouble with the Mt Davies Rd, both from travel and permit aspects. See new permit info pages on Exploroz.

Cheers, John

Barry,

if you search the forum you should find the answers you need as I posted full details several times earlier this year. You can obtain the permit on-line via WA Gov DIA website. You'll also need one for the Great Eastern at the same time. They usually take a couple of weeks to email the permit back to you.

Once you get down to Wingellina, just go straight to the general office (centre of town past the basketball court and he store. There they'll take $100 per vehicle and $20 per person, issue you a receipt and get one of the local elders either Mr Ferguson (Donald) or Mr Eddy (Whose land the corner is on) will accompany you down.

A good idea would be to ring the office, or if no answer, the store, a day or two before you arrive just to make sure someone is there. If their in the middle of sorry time for a funeral for example, there could be no one about for weeks.

I hope to do Mt Davies Road next year but permits for the top section are hard to get. You'll have to approach it from the GCR as no permits are being issued for the Giles Mulga Park Road west of the station where you turn north to head to Curtain Springs (Can't recall the name) and also from Wingelina to Warburton via Blackstone. It's in and out on the same track from the GCR.

Road down from the GCR is in fair nick as of 6 weeks ago but watch out for the camels. Cheers. Mick

Hi Barry,

Have just returned from a similar trip having departed from Coober Pedy out to Anne's Corner, then up Mt Davies Road to Surveyor General's Corner. We were part of a Tag Along tour and the tour leaders had planned the trip for more than 12 months as it took many months to get permits etc. You have to have Aboriginal trackers take you to the Corner and I think the charge is around $100 per vehicle and up to $40 per person and you can only stay in the vicinity for no more 2-3 hours! A company owned by the Pitjatjanjara traditional owners "Desert Tracks" led us through the Pit lands.

Understand it is very hard to get a permit to drive Mt Davies Road, whereas if you go via the Giles-Mulga Park Road it is easier to obtain. Of course there were the usual restrictions on Aboriginal land such as no alcohol to be consumed or carried and no photographs, could only travel on the road, no deviations etc.

The road out from Coober Pedy to Mabel Creek Station isn't too bad, rough and sandy but gradually becomes worse as you near Anne's Corner. Many rough rocks, corrugations, mulga branches hidden in sand etc. By the time we got to Tallaringa Well, many of the vehicles had early problems such as punctures, soft shocker rubbers, an engel fridge mount undid itself, an aluminium gas bottle mount snapped etc. It became rougher and more suspension bleep tering corrugations as we approached Totem 1 and 2 Bomb sites - the sites of the atomic bomb tests in 1953. The road continues to Emu airstrip where the large British Freighter aircraft landed. The airstrip is exactly as it was all those years ago. It is interesting at the bomb sites, where there are just two grey concrete obelisk markers with the still-stunned vegetation surrounding them after more than 50 years. Very little building debris remains and possibly some radiation affects if you stay in the area for too long.

About 50 kms further arrived at Anne's Corner and then headed north west along the Mt Davies Road. As the road is rarely used, it had much overhanging vegetation and all vehicles soon carried many scratches, also many radio aerials were either broken or bent. The Aboriginal trackers even had trouble at times trying to find the track, saying it had disappeared etc.

Crossed numerous red sand dunes as it is a very dry area, the scrub is low except every now and then occasional stands of desert oaks. In some ways it was very pretty, saw plenty of camels and lots of birdlife out there too. Every few kms you pass empty 50 gallon fuel drums dropped by Len Beadell and his party when they made the road some 50 years ago. He describes the route in one of his books as "a corkscrew of sandhills" which is very apt. We were rarely out of second gear. The convoy had to stop many times to allow vehicles to tackle the steeper dunes in low range, one at a time. As you progress the track, the dunes closed ranks and you seem to cross them only about 100 metres apart. We didn't like the regular noise of bushes scraping down the sides of the 4WD. All 4WD's were badly damaged, but it seems to be disappearing now as we continue to polish and buff out.

From Warturu, where it was arranged to purchase fuel, and to SG Corner, the road improved slightly - as it is a community road and maintained. After the Corner, we drove east back along the former Gunbarrell Highway, now Giles-Mulga Park through many of the communities to Mt Woodroofe. From here we followed the Britten Jones Creek to Yulara where we bade farewell to the Aboriginal Trackers. From here we drove west to Docker River and then north along the Sandy Blight Road. The trip finished back in Alice Springs.

Had a wonderful trip even if much scratch damage, and feel privileged to have been allowed to experience such a remote area.

Good luck
Jinki & Harry