Alex & Jill Benham - Travelogue: Thursday 25th July 2013

Before packing up we went for a drive out to old Halls Creek. Called into China Wall on the way (a vertical vein of white quartz).

China Wall

Old Halls Creek was where the gold rush started. Hard to imagine the miners pushing their belongings in wheel barrows the 300 plus miles from Wyndham. There’s not much left of the town today. A few plaques on various foundations of what were shops at one stage. The rammed earth post office is in slightly better conditions with parts of the walls still remaining. A roof has been constructed over the remains in an attempt to preserve them for the future.

Old Halls Creek

Back to Halls Creek to pack up, fill up with water and fuel ready for the 1000km plus trip down the Tanami Track. Officially it’s called the Tanami Road but most people refer to it as the Tanami Track, I guess referring to its real condition.

The beginning of the Tanami

In actual fact it was in pretty good condition. It was only when we left the Tanami for the drive into Wolf Creek Crater that we hit serious corrugations. It brought back memories of the Anne Beadell. They were bad. Arrived at the camp site – no cost, pit toilets, some shade and set up camp. Also set up a bit of a wind shelter as it is quite windy today.

After lunch, we set off to explore the crater. Wolf Creek is the second largest meteorite crater in the world where meteorite fragments have been found (The largest is in Arizona in the USA). What an amazing site the crater is – 850 metres in diameter. We walked around the edge of the crater before climbing down onto the floor and walking to the salt pan like centre of the crater. In wet times this area obviously holds water. There are various circles of trees indicating where the lake has been filled to at various times. Interesting that there is much more growth inside the crater than outside and a much grater variety of plants. We guessed that this was because there would be greater moisture retention and also the area would be protected from burning.