Canning Stock Route Part III

The Canning Stock Route, doing it the Holiday way Part III!

The “H” in Holiday is our way of describing to people to enjoy the journey no matter what environmental challenges you may endure when Four Wheel Driving in the middle of nowhere.

The Canning Stock Route in Western Australia is 2000km from Halls Creek to Wiluna, we allowed 21 days = 100km per day. Corrugations, Sand dunes and Rocks, we were very self preserving of our vehicles and trailers after seeing many wrecks along the way.

Note: talk to your insurance company about your coverage!

There are 51 wells on the CSR; our way of travel from North to South is counting down from well 51 to well 5. The challenging dunes that are 10mtr to 16mtr high start between wells 46 to 41. A different beast to tackle compared to the Simpson Desert or Fraser Island. When travelling with anchors (packed camper trailers 1500kg+) we soon learnt about track maintenance.

Previous travellers rip and roar and spin their wheels with higher tyre pressure going up the soft steep sand dunes and create big “whoopee’s.” Well folks it is those whoopee’s that break the important bits of the vehicle – suspension, chassis, bulbar, etc etc.

Our preservation plan was go slow keep your tyre pressure low! All manned with shovels (except Julie –official movie maker) we easily filled in the whoopee holes with the soft sand. Time was well spent as we then drove up and over; smoothly packing down the track for others to follow. Work smarter not harder! Note: camper trailers do not chew up dunes – only the fast & furious do!

Our stats were 1000 dunes – 10 challenging ones needing MAXTRAX, 3 snatches, and 1 winch.

Well 40 we visited Michael Tobin’s grave – Alfred Canning’s bore sinker 1907, a very valuable member of the party was fatally speared. The desert scenery changes dramatically to salt crusted Tobin Lake, dotted with hardy purple bushes. 17km across the lake we hit top speed of 30kmph. Wahoo!

Further on near well 39 is a majestic forest of Desert Oak trees, incredible how they survive. A surprise- “what is that in the trees ahead” – Chinese lanterns. Lol!

Another few km’s we stopped to explore some red ironstone rocky breakaways, an opportunity to stretch our legs in the Great Sandy Desert. Photo stop, the desert is alive with wildflowers at varying stages of flowering; we sucked the sweet nectar from Grevilleas near well 38.

So many stops, so much to experience, we travelled 117km that day, ticked off wells 41, 40, 39.

This is the H in Holiday! Note: keep a journal of all your photo stops – pays dividends when you are sorting the photos and video’s later on.