The Tanami Road & Wolfe Creek
From Kings Canyon Resort we took the 93km unsealed Mereenie Loop road. A permit is required to travel the road for a small fee, but when we went to the roadhouse they said they weren’t printed and just to go ahead.
At the end of the loop road we continue off road and joined the Tamani road, just west of Alice. (From Alice Springs its 1053km to Halls Creek) We spent the night at the Tilmouth Well Roadhouse having heard amazing reviews of their Thai food. The reviews were right, it was the best Thai we have ever eaten in Aus. We picked up a leaflet from the roadhouse about the road which includes some points of interest along the way. We also filled up all three of our jerry cans and had just enough fuel to get us to Halls Creek. Although there is fuel available in a couple of the communities, we decided not to rely on this.
We had an early night at the roadhouse campground, ready for a long days travel back into our home state of Western Australia. They need to work on their welcome to WA, there was no sign just a couple of poles in the ground. We had set off at 7am NT time and didn’t arrive at Wolfe Creek until 5pm WA time. The sun was setting, creating beautiful pink skies. It was a rougher ride along the road into the National Park, passing an old derelict homestead to get to the campsite.
Our camping neighbours popped over as we were setting up, to say tonight was a movie night round at theirs. They had set up a projector and screen and were playing what else….but Wolf Creek. A horror movie filmed in Wolfe Creek, about the murder of backpackers. The story is based on some of Australia’s notorious killers. It was a fun night and the film is pretty scary.
The next morning we headed up the track to the crater. It was far more impressive than I had expected. Standing on the top of the rim, you can imagine the meteor hurtling down from space, hitting the earth and forming this colossal sized crater. There were no offical walking tracks, so we hadn’t planned on a hike. There were however lots of well formed paths which looked like they offered a nice hike around the rim or down into the crater. From wolf Creek we headed back on the Tanami and into Halls Creek and onwards to the Bungle Bungles.
Sarah x
