06-Jul-2007 -- My brother John and I (and our respective wives, Mariane and Sandy) had just completed a trip through Rudall River National Park (second largest national park in Australia) and were heading back to Perth via Telfer, Carawine Gorge, Woody Woody and Nullagine. I had picked out a track on the NatMap series that lead from Skull Springs Road through to Christie Crossing, passing within about 4km of the confluence.
Even on the high resolution Google Earth images, the track looked quite good and fairly well used, however, it turned out to be very rough in places, and quite overgrown - we had to resort to the bush cutters in a number of places (see photo #9). The crossing at Davis River (see photo #10) was also somewhat challenging with about 50cm deep water and a steep bank of loose river gravel.
Another faint track we intended to follow proved to be almost indistinguishable from the surroundng countryside and was heavily overgrown with 2m high bush, so we retreated to the closest point on the main track, about 3.6km due west of the confluence.
This was going to be a solo walk in, so I loaded up with 2-way radio, GPS, camera, wrap-around gators (leggings) for protection against the spinifex, and lots of water. The route in consisted of low, rolling spinifex-covered hills with numerous deep gullys full of dense eucalypt saplings. The ground was mostly rocky and the gully slopes quite loose (see photo #7).
The walk in took a little over an hour due to circumnavigating a path around steeper gullys. After the usual photo shoot, I followed a more direct route back to the car - a round trip total of 8.4km and 2 hrs 20 min.
Once back in the vehicles, we re-traced our tracks back to our camp near the main Skull Springs road, and next morning continued on through Nullagine then south to Newman and back to Perth. All in all, an excellent trip, topped off by a successful confluence visit!