10-Dec-2000 -- My three children and I drove out east of Perth through
York and southeast to Beverley, which is where I had my first flight in
a glider a few years ago. There's an aeronautical museum there - you
can't miss the WWII Vampire jet outside it (Pic 6). We kept going
through town, and followed the road to Mawson; then turned left onto a
dirt road - Greenhills South Road. This is where GPS and IntraGIS (our
system at work) differ - according to my print out, 32S 117E should have
been down Northbourne Road. Instead, we believed the GPS and
stayed on Greenhills South Road, stopping ~115 metres from the confluence.
After Peter and Maddy checked that the fence wasn't electrified (!!), we
stepped over it, and wandered down across a dry river bed following the
eMap. Peter and Maddy decided to stay in the river bed, so Sarah and I
walked on a few more metres and managed to get right on top of 32S
177E - lots of lovely zeros (Pic 1). Although it was fenced and had been
partly cleared in the past, the area around the confluence is just dry
grasses and scraggy trees (Pic 2). Walking back to the bridge along the
dry creek bed, you could see where salt had formed a crust on the
surface (Pic 4). This confluence is an easy half-day trip from Perth, with
some rather unusual roadside attractions (Pic 7).