Halls Creek

We were heading west today and the Halls were heading into Central Australia. Gaz, Rick and the kids went to check the nets to find they had caught 5 red claw which they released. We had one last swim in the fabulous pool before saying our farewells. I spoke to Slingair at Turkey Creek who still had a helicopter doing flights over the Bungle Bungles so we were keen to check it out. Back through Kununurra for the third time we were excited to be heading out along the Great Northern Hwy towards Broome even if it was 1000km away. We had to pull over when a rain squall hit us because we couldn't see the road in front. Fortunately it didn't last long. We were traveling behind a truck carrying a large number of truck tyres stacked precariously on the very back and strapped together with a couple of flimsy tie downs. I made mention of it to Rick and told him not to drive too close. The truck got ahead of us anyway with the large number of wee stops we had to make. However, roadworks meant we caught up with it again and just out of Turkey Creek a large tyre fell off the back and came flying towards us. Rick had to make some radical maneuvers to avoid it as it bounced passed us on the road. Another tyre also fell but remained on the back of the truck. Rick was fuming and chased the truck down and abused him. He apologised but didn't seem to realize he had nearly taken us out. We pulled into Turkey Creek roadhouse as did the truck. We spoke to the helicopter pilot but the sky was still looking quite stormy with cloud build up and smoke haze. A $1000 was a lot to spend in less than perfect conditions and I wasn't keen on going up in a helicopter just after the tyre incident. We continued on to Halls Creek thinking we may be able to get a flight there. Halls Creek is a dusty outback hick town but it was already 4.30pm so we booked in to the van park and fired up the air con. Rick enquired about flights but there were only fixed wing planes and they were booked out. We were disappointed about missing the Bungle Bungles but weren't prepared to hang around any longer with Broome in our sights.