all night, close at hand and we were in our saddles early enough. I wanted to go west , and the further west the better; but we decided to follow the creek and see what became of it, and if, any more waters existed in it. We found that it meandered through a piece of open plain, splendidly grassed, and delightful to gaze upon. How beautiful is the colour of green? What other colour could even Nature have chosen to embellish the face of the Earth? How, indeed, would red, or blue, or yellow pall upon the eye? But green, emerald green, is the loveliest of all Natures hues. The soil of this plain was good and firm. The creek had now worn a deep channel, and in three miles from where we camped we came upon the top of a high red bank, with a very nice little waterhole underneath. There was abundance of water for 100 to 200 horses for a month or two, and plenty more from the sand below. Three other ponds were met lower down, and I believe that water can always be got by digging. We followed the creek for a mile or two farther, and found that it soon became exhausted, as casuarina and troidia sand hills environed the little plain, and after a short course of scarcely ten miles, the little creek became swallowed up by those water-devouring monsters. I named this creek Laurie’s Creek. There was from 6000 to 10,000 acres of fine grassland in this little plain and it was such a change from the sterile troidia and sandy country outside it that I could not resist calling it the Vale of Tempe.”
Fast forward to September 2013:
I was on my own as my travelling mate suddenly had something else to do and pulled the pin on this trip. I headed west via the Ernest Giles Road from the Stuart Highway. This road is notorious for being rough as but on this day luck was with me as the Grader was working in smoothing the corrugations out.
Once I met up with the sealed Luritja Road which runs from the Lasseter Highway to Kings Canyon Resort, I stopped for a snack and boiled the Billy.
A relatively short distance after passing the Kings Canyon Resort, and driving out from the Watarrka National Park, I swung the Datto to the west once again along a very faint track that was most likely the start of a seismic track further along.
Having digital mapping at my disposal on the dashboard it a great help in find a route across open country. However, the mapping does not always relate from the map to what’s actually on the ground. My government maps with a scale of 1 to 250,000 is the best that I can afford but I would really like better mapping and will endeavour to get some soon.
Digital mapping makes searching for places a whole lot easier.
The Vale of Tempe is marked on my maps and it looks relatively easy to access. I had permission to enter the land area and looking at the map decided to see if I could get up and over a relatively easy ridge. Or so it seemed. On the plains the country had shrubs, buffel grass and majestic eucalypts. I started heading towards the flood-out of a marked creek and crossed over a shallow part before starting to slowly climb the rise. At first the rise was gentle and with few obstacles other than low mulga flora and other shrubs but then the further I went the bigger the mulga became. I started picking my way through the trees and the branches made horrific scratching sounds on the door panels. Still thinking that I had a good chance to clear the obstacles ahead and went even further and then got into some rough sandstone rock country to boot and with daylight showing over the bonnet of the Datto I decided to stop to see where I was at. Just as well I did as I was now very close to a sheer drop of 50 metres or so. Ahead of me was a large fallen tree stump and forward movement was no longer an option. So I decided to turn around and head back down the hill.
The Vale of Tempe in the distance……. so close and yet so far
Easier said than done. After a 9 point turn of forward and reverse I was facing in the right direction again but could not see where I had come from as the trees had stood up again. Then I got the Datto stuck on 