Giles - Mulga Park Road - To Surveyour Generals Corner, Blackstone & beyond.

Wednesday 30th May
Mulga Scrub by the GCR
Approx 30 km west of Warburton.

We were up early and on the road west keen to get the 75 kilometres to the Mulga Park Road intersection under our belt. Here we headed south don the Mulga Park Road towards Wingellina and our destination, Surveyour Generals Corner. It is a bit of a misnomer as this road is actually the northern most reaches of the Mount Davies Road. As such it met the east-west aligned Giles Mulga Park Road some 70 kilometres of heavily corrugated Road down the track. We encountered our first Len Beadell Marker of the trip as well as several groups of extremely healthy looking Camels. Once we hit the Giles-Mulga Park Road, we stopped for a bit of morning tea and then headed into the Wingellina Community. It took a little while to find the administration centre and even more time to locate Mr Donald Ferguson who would be our guide out to the corner (which was situated on Mr Eddy’s land. Mr Eddy was away unfortunately.

It was a 7 km trip out to the corner where we found a shelter of sorts and the parking area. The corner is actually two markers, there being a bit of a dog leg in the border of a hundred metres or so. Don’t know who got it wrong originally but they did. Mt Ferguson was most happy to pose for photographs at both markers. In conversations he told us to go straight ahead to Warburton rather than waste time and energy going 150 km back up to the GCR. Bless him so that’s what we did. We were able to drive around the communities as we did. The Blackstone ranges were a sight. Low rocky ranges of tumbled boulders. We were passed at one stage by a commodore doing about 140 kph and spraying us with stones, a direct hit just above my head leaving a souvenir of the trip in the form of a crack.




We reached Warburton and negotiated our way out to the roadhouse where we filled up with Diesel before hitting the track again. As it was late afternoon we decided to call it a day. We spent some time cruising up the shorter sections of “old Hwy” looking for a suitable camp. At one point a car or two of locals followed us in and set up camp while we were looking. In the end we opted to pull off the road and into the scrub. We set up camp about 100 metres off the road in the thick Mulga. Plenty of dead wood around to cook dinner on the fire and a magnificent moon rising over the scrub. A few scotches and a play around on the satphone after dinner.