"Laverton to Uluru - The Great Central Highway" by northeast80

After filling up with petrol at Laverton the tarmac came to an end. The landscape was already changing, we passed quite a few dead dingos by the side of the road with the biggest vultures I'd ever seen picking at the remains. It didn't bode well for the journey ahead.
We stopped after a while to eat and drink something, and for Frank's arms to stop vibrating, we thought the corrugations were bad too start with, they were a whole lot worse as you passed through the WA/NT border.
It took two and a half days driving in all, we couldn't listen to music or even talk to each other much because of the noise. We passed about five cars a day, all 4WD's, our was a Toyota LiteAce (not a 4WD, an old van converted into a camper van by stuffing an old kids bed into it)
Every road station we stopped at to re-fuel, they only sell Opal out there- it's aviation fuel mixed with something else as the Aboriginies can't get high from the fumes. Most of the track was through Aboriginal land.
We were warned not to stop for anyone by the side of the road, there were hundreds of burnt out cars along the road, the 1st time we came across anyone was a group of about 7 Aboriginals by the side of a van trying to get us to stop, well what could we do? If they wanted a lift we didn't have room, we couldn't spare any petrol and there's no way we could have toed them, we did tell the people at the next road house.
The other encounter was with two 4WD's. One was on the opposite side of the road, facing towards us, the other was parallel on the other side of the road, as we drove towards them they both started to move towards us. I got a little scared thinking they were going to drive on either side of us and just pin us together. Well this was just my imagination running wild, but it was quite a threat. Maybe they got a closer look and decided we wern't worth it, a couple of backpackers.

The whole place was so eary (?) no animas except for the camels, there were no birds or even insects that we could see. The landscape didn't change at all, though it wasn't as desert looking as we expected- there was still quite a lot of growth around.
At night time it was just incredable, so silent, and the skys were something I shall probably never see again in my life- the stars touched the horizon, you could see every single star there was, all the comets and satelites.

For miles and miles there was signs up about hidden dips and crests, there was no water around at all, but of course in the only one that they didn't warn us about there was water.
We'd just got over the crest of the hill only to be faced with a stream, Frank tried to break but of course with us just driving on sand we just slid nicely into the water.
We got out, collected sticks, grass and pebbles to put under the wheels, a car with Aboriginies in came by and didn't stop. Slowly but surely we backed out, moving the sticks along, me reversing and Frank pushing, we tried it the other way around, but I'm just not that strong.
Finally we stopped slipping and got out of the water, we slowly edged around the driest part to get out, we were only a couple of km's to the next road house anyway, so not completly stuck if we couldn't get out.

This one happened at the end of the day, we were driving along and suddnly swerved to one side, back to the other, back again, went on two wheels a few times, thought, oh my god is this it? Are we going to tip? Luckly we didn't and ended up bogged down in some very soft sand.
The problem was the narrow wheel base of the car, as primaraly it's only 4WD's and road trains that use the track we constantly had one wheel in the track and the other on the rough, bunched up loose sand.
Luckly, as we were to discover, the last car of the day passed and kindly stopped and pulled us out, after we had spent about an hour on hands and knees trying to dig ourselves out and slowly reversing, getting bogged again and doing it again.

As soon as we hit the NT the track got so much worse, so heavily rutted, think this had to do with quite a large Aboriginal community being there that there was more traffic at this end. The town was a bit of a shock, rubbish absolutely everywhere, kids and dogs just raggardly hanging about, people drinking, empty bottles and cans everywhere, the petrol pumps being locked up so they couldn't get to the fumes. All we did was fill up and leave.
We didn't stay at any of the campsights at the road houses, just pulled off by the side of the road and slept in the van.

What I looked at for 2.5 days.

The landscape finally changing.

Kissing the tarmac, the silence and stillness was incredable. I would do the whole thing all over again.