Day One - Cunderdin to Leonora  - 740 kilometres
Day one of the Morning Glory trip started with Petrina, Gloria and myself leaping out of bed at the appointed time ( I know Gloria was out of bed because she knocked on the wall of our caravan on her way to her ablutions).  The day had started and we had a tight schedule to get to Leonara on the first day.  As the ladies performed a complicated shuffle of the contents of the Land Cruiser.  I inspected the Limbach in the back of Rob's Ford, discussed engine issues, and generally prepared myself for the trip.  Of course since Bob Milligan was there we needed a further consultation before all was ready. For reasons that I can't myself understand I was in the bad books for talking too much!

    We left the caravan Park and headed East with Gloria in command - but under supervision - she was having her first drive of the 'Cruiser.  Gloria had to revisit those days when one had to do funny things with clutch pedals and gear levers but being on the open roads this didn't slow her pace very much.

    At  Southern Cross we paused for a pleasant lunch in the park adjacent to the new Info center and departed the town with Petrina driving.  A session of unremarkable driving conditions took us through Coolgardie and on to Kalgoorlie where we sought out the Woolworths fuel station and topped off with some discount fuel that we imagined might be the cheapest on the trip.  Indications for this early leg suggested consumption figures of the order of ten litres per hundred, in line with the experienced opinion as to what we should achieve.  Time also for us to pick up some drinks and a can of RP 7.

    Departing Kalgoorlie I took charge of the driving and for about fifty kilometres had a pleasant time but an urgent need for a sleep saw Gloria back at the wheel to bring the Cruiser into Leonara at about seven o'clock which was a little later than planned by management.  Lee at the Leonora Motel saw us as highly satisfactory customers as we were the only occupants of the motel and didn't want breakfast in the morning.  This gave her thoughts of a sleep in and relaxed day on Sunday.  We didn't need a motel breakfast as we'd be leaving way too early for that you understand.

    The Leonora Motel was quite comfortable and provided us with a green aerosol tin of pea beau spray to deal with any mosquito problems we might suffer.  Petrina went on a "mozzie" sortie,  armed with a green spray can, and found a mozzie in the bathroom.  Zap, zap and another zap.  The mozzie went down in an inverted flat spin, to lie feet ceilingwards on the floor.  Such success brought thoughts of more kills so Petrina went to war in the main room of the motel spraying high and low.  Myself, laying nearly asleep on the bed processed thoughts slowly.  Thoughts like "It's a pity that they had to take freon off the market as a propellant for aerosol cans because it didn't smell too much", further thoughts like "I guess that they have replaced it with a  petrochemical agent 'cause you can surely smell the oily smell",  and another thought "in fact that smell is very like RP 7".  Thoughts of a catnap vanished as I sat bolt upright. "Hey Trini, where is the insect spray you have been using".  Yes, I know, you are all way ahead of me - and Trini produced the can RP 7 "insect spray".  So there's a tip for you,  RP 7 kills mozzies very quickly but unfortunately of course it doesn't do the other occupants in the room a lot of good either.

    And so to bed!

Day Two - Leonora to Tjukayilla  - 540 kilometres
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  A little more reshuffling of the Cruiser's contents was required and as we'd decided to use only packaged water along the way to avoid any tummy upsets we had to purchase some, and it seemed worthwhile to again top off the Cruiser's tanks as we were now facing the unknown when we heading out past Laverton.  With Petrina at the wheel,  the unknown came to us fairly gently and we made good time over good graded gravel roads.  The only unsettling factor was the number of "dead" cars we encountered ( a"dead" car is defined as one that has no wheels, windows, and is either burnt out or rolled upside down - and of course a car still qualifies if it is both burnt out and rolled upside down).   I tried my best to cheer all aboard with comments like "Doesn't it remind you of those movies where the hero, crossing a treacherous desert, comes upon the skeletons of dead camels every so often".  Deafening silence followed my helpful thoughts. I took some comfort initially from the fact that all of the cars were from an older era and there were no four wheel drives represented but as you'd expect, in due course we came upon examples of inverted and burntout modern cars and four wheel drives.  So pictures of the dried out skeletons returned to haunt me.  We started out counting dead cars but as the count grew into the uncountably large region we moved on to only counting dead four wheel drives.

    Laverton proved to be all that I expected of it, though the expectations started from a low base anyway and we spent only a little time doing a pass through the outskirts before retuning to our favourite sport of observing the year, make and model of the dead cars and four wheel drives we were passing.

     Lunch was taken in a roadside parking bay where we shared the company of a younger couple who's plans matched ours as far as Alice Springs but then included a trip through the Tanami Desert  to Broome.  Following our lunch I took over the driving but found it all too tiring and handed over to Gloria to complete the day's distance.

    Have trouble getting your tongue around the name of our evenings rest site?  It's actually pronounced Cha (as in cha cha cha), kee (as in keep) and la as in la la la to give Cha-kee-la.  Rumours abound that the Government have provided aboriginal people with a talented Polish phoneticist to help create a written form of their language.

    Tjukayilla proved to be very comfortable and Andrew and Sue made us feel thoroughly welcome.  We were checked out by their dogs and officially made a part of the family.  The ladies tried their hand at cuddling an emu chick.  Boy that chick had technique.  Just a few seconds cuddled up against anyones chest and he was asleep, made me feel quite envious.

Day Three - Tjukayilla to Warakurna - 427 Kilometres

    I inspected the RFDS road strip adjacent to Tjukayilla and found a nice big sign securely planted at the threshold warning motorists that it was 284 kilometres to the next fuel supply - Hmmm!

    We started the day with myself driving, after all the Captain should do an occasional takeoff shouldn't he?  To add interest to the day's travel we stopped counting four wheel drives and started counting dead buses, though I hasten to say here that to be a dead bus didn't seem to require that it be rolled onto its roof - stripped of its wheels yes, burnt out yes, but not rolled over.  Good though corrugated gravel gave us an easy run out to Warburton where we stopped for lunch.  Of course for cultural reasons no photographs could be taken at Warburton and we had little contact with even the Roadhouse as the Cruiser was still turning in its ten litre per hundred performance giving us something like a total of 1400 kilometres range.  We inquired about the airstrip and were told to go down through the township and turn left to the airfield but the signs suggest that permits were required for access to the township so we had to give it a miss.

    Post lunch saw Petrina and then Gloria handle the driving for most of the afternoon and the sport for the drive was to count dead trucks which are fewer in number than caravans. It seemed to us to be more significant that the road wrecked even trucks.  Caravans, though as killable as their road using cousins, don't seem to offer the challenge in the wrecking stakes that one could get from a truck.

    Big surprise of the late afternoon for us was that the Roadhouse at Warakurna closed at 5:00 pm - Central Standard Time!  Oops, we'd arrived too late and found the Roadhouse, our source of accommodation for the night, closed like a Chubb safe.  The sign said that the Manager lived at the rear and so "cap in hand" I visited his residence.  When he worked his way through my story that proved we were the long booked, even if late arrived, Baird and Clintons he happily got me the keys with the comment "See me in the morning" and so to our Backpackers accommodation we retired.  Modest but clean enough for us to use, the rooms worked out OK. We were sharing the accommodation units with two Fugro pilots, Dave and Simon,  involved in aerial surveys in the area.  So we had company for tea and sat by the fire talking and viewing aircraft (of course) films until bed time.  Dave worked out that if we flew from Cunderdin we must know ex-workmate and  friend Zoltan. 

    Warakurna was something of a  museum of dead vehicles comprising mostly four wheel drives and probably because of the large numbers of Toyota products out here they were well represented in the collection. .  Pondering over the collection I decided that they had been towed into a random pattern in the area, or perhaps struggled in under their own power, and then been executed.  Execution taking the form of removing their wheels where they sat.  Later visits to the vehicles showed an interesting side of operations because there had been no attempt made to arrange any for resurrection of the fallen as parts were stripped randomly from vehicles so that three LandCruiser utes of similar make and model had different areas of them dismantled seemingly for spares.  Any one vehicle could have been canabilised to get the desired parts but it seemed more likely that someone walked to the one nearest to them at that moment and pulled that one apart.  One assumes that they were all abandonded vehicles and as such had no real cost to the operations at Warakurna.

Day Four - Warakurna to Yulara - 350 kilometres

    This was to be the big test.  The road beyond Docker River came with some worrying warnings.  But first we visited the Giles weather observatory and spent a pleasant hour with Dave, Garry, Chris and Mike looking at the history of the place, their work and equipment both past and present.  This station and some thirty other stations launche met balloons at 00:00 zulu and 12:00 zulu.  We could delay the challenge no longer so full of fuel we started for Yulara.  Petrina drove and handled the Western Australian part of the road with aplomb.  But  it was the final 180ks beyond Docker River that had the reputation.  Forty k's on we gratefully turned into the Lasseter Cave Rest stop.

    But a nice touch of history with a visit to Lassetter's Cave.  Harold Lewis Bell Lassetter spent 31 days at the cave in 1931 after his camels bolted with his water and supplies and died some 25 days later in an attempt to walk out of the area armed with only a pitiful supply of water.  We were all struck at some time on the trip so far by the lush vegetation out here in the desert.  It's so misleading and you could imagine that it would be easy to sustain life but as Lassetter proved, even with experience, for the white man such is not the case.  We lunched at Lassetter's Cave and found that wasps like either blue mugs, or camomile and peppermint  tea, or blue mugs containing camomile and peppermint tea.  But whatever, Trini had to forgo her preferred drink and yielded to the large wasps that flew in  from all about the area.  The more sensible Gloria and myself drank our tea from green or white cups without concern.  Also at Lassetter's Cave we met a couple in a large Winnebago towing a Ford Kia.  We'd passed them some time before and they we travelling slowly, planning to cover the day's trip we set ourselves in about five days.  But to do them credit, they had the time and had apparently covered almost every recognised rough road in Australia in this patient and persistent manner.

    On to the real challenge and Trini wasn't going to hand over the wheel to me - I think that was mainly because I was asleep in the back but whatever.  Gloria professed a lack of interest in driving the Road, pointing out that with her superior skills at spotting the numerous camels we'd had to slow for, she would be better employed as an observer.  And the Road lived up to its reputation.  The corrugations seemed to be too long to speed over unless one was prepared to use speeds above that which our age, reflexes and knowledge of the road told us was safe.  Though several vehicles passed us at speeds in the vicinity of 120 kph, us doing a modest 70 to 80kph - hire four wheel drives or employer's vehicles we didn't know but tended to suspect either.  The road surface was badly maintained and I'd hope that it was the worst we'll have to negotiate on this trip.  Areas of ball bearing gravel would send the Cruiser down the road at funny angles proving that the steering wheel had no involvement in directional control.  Deep sandy holes, often well concealed lay in the middle of the road and these would try to tear the wheel from the driver's grip as it swung the vehicle off track.  And hard, hard holes were sprinkled about so that the Cruiser took a hammering no matter what Trini tried.

    Forty kilometres into the Docker River Road we paused to provide a military funeral for our drivers sideview mirror.  A good companion on the campaign since Perth it was amongst the fallen in the Battle of Docker River Road.  At the eighty kilometer mark we idled to a stop to give Trini time to relax her facial muscles and finger muscles as both were having a tough time out here as she sought to use will power alone to overcome the Cruisers worst wayward tendencies.  Many of the bumps and swerves we'd experienced were so bad they were even waking me in the back seat. As we stopped we were met with the sort of noise you listen for when you are out in such an area, the idling Toyota was giving out sounds like twelve blacksmiths hitting anvils with their heavy hammers.  But Gloria came to the rescue when she spotted that the front pipe to the muffler had pulled away and the idling motor was rocking just enough to be using the inlet pipe as a gong for a large bell provided by the muffler shell.  So Onwards! To infinity and beyond!

     At last, with thirty kilometres to go, Trini gave up the unequal struggle, woke me in the back seat and handed over and I fought the last skirmish of the Battle bringing the Cruiser out on the bitumen at the Olgas where it ran down the road as sweet as any Rolls Royce would do.

    We took "lunch" at a nice shady table that gave us an excellent view of sunset at the Olgas - Kata Tjutu if you're of the PC persuasion - having gently dispossessing British couple Nick and Natasha of their prime piece of real estate.

    On to our booked chalet in the Ayres Rock Campground - clearly no PC influence in the naming at the Campground - showers for all and a pleasant evening over a well deserved bottle of champagne before our even more deserved rest.

    We were fortunate to be able to get a talented media person ("ten guesses as to who that might be" - Petrina) to work with Trini for her problem and he has been able to reduce the number of times that Trini starts swearing when anyone mentions the Docker River Road.  He says that with time we should hope for a complete recovery. We should of course hope shouldn't we?