Taking the back roads in remote WA

After a fun few days with Frances and David at Wooleen Station we headed north to Carey Downs Station. The recent rains that had allowed swimming and canoeing on the Murchison River, also meant there were plenty of wash-outs and road closures. We fuelled up at Murchison Settlement, checked out the road report, asked Wink and the roadhouse for his local knowledge, and opted to take the most direct route via the back tracks…but kept our fingers crossed.

Murchison Settlement and Gascoyne Junction each have a Shire office and a roadhouse that doubles up as pretty much everything else (cafe, caravan park, grocery store, and in Gascoyne Junction’s case, a pub). We met Bruce and his daughter Sharna roughly midway between the two in the middle of nowhere. They’d been out drilling and had just knocked off work. Parked up on the gravel, Bruce waved us down to make sure we were turning off to Carey Downs because the road straight ahead was impassable. Meanwhile Sharna was sitting crossed legged beside the big Mack truck making popcorn.