Day 13 - Wednesday 4/7/01
Start - Mt Doreen
Stop - Tanami
MineTrip Odometer - 313km
Stopped time - 2.21hrs
Moving average - 78.6km/hr
Moving time - 3.58hrs
Max speed - 99.4km/hr
Our riverbed
camp was hard to leave but by 10.30am we were all packed up. Sandy is an amateur club competition photographer and spends enormous amounts of time wandering
camp (and stopping the convoy) to find her prize shots. It’s actually quite inspirational so we don’t complain at all. She has 2 Canon camera bodies, a swag of lenses, 3 tripods and a Sony digital still camera plus Colin has a Sony hi-8 video camera. We’re also rather “Japanese” with our 2 tripods, Sony DC-TRV20 (that takes both video and stills) and a Minolta 7000i SLR camera with a swag of lenses. Our most used being our 19mm-35mm wide angle for landscape photography.
The road north of Mt Doreen was still very firm and travelling speed was still as per highway. This was quite obviously the result of considerable roadworks as the area was low lying and the roadbase built up above obvious floodwater. About 40km before
the Granites, huge
termite mounds poke through the Spinifex plains for as far as you see. Unfortunately, there is no access to
the Granites ruins, which is fenced off by Aboriginal landholders. A little past
the Granites Mine on the LHS tracks lead up a distinctive hilly outlook called “Quartz Ridge”, which makes a nice lunch stop or behind the
hill you could make a
camp. Our day didn’t end until we found a
camp on the LHS in a river bed about 30km north of the Tanami
Mine, just before the track makes the big swing to the west.