Gunbarrel Hwy Day 9 - Yulara to Alice Springs

Day 9 - Saturday 30/6/01
Start - Yulara
Stop - Alice Springs

A long driving day on bitumen. Our fuel consumption from Carnegie to Alice Springs was 252.63L over 1580km, which equates to 12.5L per 100km – 4.2L diesel 80 series Toyota Landcruiser weighing 3700kg fully loaded.

We have been contacting the Jacka’s (my parents) every few days on the Radphone or selcalling via the 4WD radio network to see whether we can meet up in Alice Springs. They have spent the last few days at Ross River Homestead after coming from Sydney via Longreach, Boulia and across the Plenty Highway.

As we pulled into Alice and had mobile phone service we phoned them and discovered we were in the same street! We met up and checked into our camping ground for 2 nights to allow time for washing, shopping and tyre repairs/replacements.

So let me introduce you to our travelling party. The ExplorOz team is David, Michelle and baby Leah who is 8mths old and for the next 3 weeks we’ll be travelling with Michelle’s parents Colin and Sandy Jacka travelling in a GQ diesel Patrol.


Our setups are almost identical with Roller Drawers, Rhino Roof Racks, Bushranger Rack Sacks, Barrett HF radios (both using Telstra Radphone RDD service and AN4WDRN) and both carrying a GPS and two laptops each.

Like us, Colin has one computer for work and one for interfacing with the GPS. We both run the Auslig Raster maps on CD and we are beta-testing Hema’s new Great Desert Tracks Map on CD.



Colin and Sandy are using a Southern Cross centre-pole tent, although they’re replaced the centre-pole with a square-frame to enable side-by-side sleeping. We have our old faithful tent that has come around Australia with us since 1997. It’s a Nomad canvas van-tent, which enables us to leave our rear doors open into the back of the tent whilst in camp and to drive off for day trips. It makes getting to the back of the car very easy and because you can leave the doors open all night undercover, even in rain, means you don’t have to constantly put everything away. We also have a second tent, a small mesh dome tent for hotter weather or as a baby-safe crawling pen. The Jacka’s also have a second tent, a quick erect dome tent.