Managed to tweak my neck overnight somehow and woke up hardly able to turn my head without a fair degree of pain! Not the best start to the day however was quite nice having a coffee as the sun came up and seeing a family of dingoes wander past including a cute little puppy dingo. Got a few Nurofens into me and checked the yabbie pots, no dice. The triple-repaired tyre seemed ok though. Spent a few hours reading and kicking it in the shade then headed on down the road. Nice to get a lot of reading done but we'd certainly be doing more hiking and looking around if it wasn't 39 degrees every day.
It's a great journey but not quite as compelling as the Savannah Way, we both really want to visit the gulf country again! Most of the time we're doing 60 kays along the dirt but there are some horrendous patches of corrugations, never more than a couple of kays at a time though. Doesn't seem to bother some people though, you see other 4wds hammering the other way at 80 plus. They're often Britz rentals though and to be honest, if I was renting my 4wd I'd be driving a little bit faster too. That said, they don't always seem to be under the control of the most competent of drivers.
Rocked up at the Mt Barnett roadhouse to have lunch and sort out the camping fees for Manning Gorge. Lovely collage on the wall of photos of wrecked 4wds! Speed usually the culprit apparently (resulting in rolled cars, completely written off, lucky you didn't die, etc) but also some over-confident creek crossing attempts. Anyway, got ourselves up the dirt track to the great campsite, found a spot and went for a swim in the gorge. Quite nice but not as good as Maguk. Watched a darter (one of my new favourite Australian birds) fly around and stretch his wings and amazing neck. Got the yabbie pots in too despite the lady at the roadhouse saying nobody has much luck around here, maybe they didn't have our secret bait! Decided to smash the last of my beers given that it's Saturday night and I'm sick of rationing beer. Will just have to go cold turkey the next couple of days.
