The rain had stopped by morning and so everyone was up early preparing for our next leg of the journey to White Cliffs.

Trev was sitting in a cloud of flies trying to have his early morning quiet time…

Some Zebra Finches had found a goldmine in Rosie’s wastewater fountain…

As we had about 110km on dirt today with the vans, everyone got busy taping up the vents in the vans to minimise dust intake. Rose and Dave worked in harmony cleaning and taping in a very coordinated manner…and very thorough with every protrusion on the van thoroughly double taped – and even colour coordinated with the van.

Klaus was done quickly with his taping, and Trev had a bit of an issue so ended up having to borrow Klaus’s stool to reach the high spots.

Dead Horse Gully was a great campsite – we were somewhat sad to leave but keen to go on to the next adventure…

We drove south toward Milparinka passing a huge salt lake on the way…

Between Milparinka and Packsaddle was Henry Roberts Road which led to White Cliffs, so we turned left and stopped to let down the tyre pressures on car and van before hitting the dirt.

At the junction of the highway and Henry Roberts Road were two unique “tool trees” – another quirky outback construction!

The road was in good condition for most of the way much to everyone’s relief as some of the unsealed roads can be a bit of an unknown….

We drove though arid plains, farmlands, large cattle stations….

The road surface changed from red dirt to white, back again, rocky to sandy and back….

In the distance we could see mountain ranges.

Trev was diligent with the radio comms forewarning the crew of upcoming obstacles, holes, and various wildlife…

Halfway to White Cliffs we decided to stop so everyone could do a van check (or was that really a toilet stop for Klaus??) as there had been a few unexpected bumps…

The Loveday van was intact…. But Branch played havoc in the Weiss van opening the freezer door to get at the ice-cream…. Or was it really that a bump had caused the door to fling open sending the contents all over the floor…

The Wells fire extinguisher had dislodged … or had Branch commandeered it to put out inevitable spotfires????

We continued over dry creek beds…that started to look damp as we got closer to White Cliffs….and then looked muddy as there had obviously been some recent rain in the area.

Out of nowhere popped a blue tree which excited Branch greatly, blue being his favourite colour…

Clouds loomed ahead adding an interesting element to the landscape…

As we crossed over into the Central Darling Shire the dividing sign had an obvious spelling error!

Getting closer to White Cliffs the road turned into red mud – slippery and very messy….. the Ranger and Snowy took one for the team getting most of the mud as Trev was able to advice the others of the pitfalls ahead…

We arrived at White Cliffs and found the caravan park. There was mud over the front of the van and caked all over the mudflaps, pipes, step etc…

After setting up we drove around town to get an idea of the place and location of various services etc. White Cliffs is very small with only 1 general store, 1 pub and then basic services like police station and health centre.

They did not have many supplies as the roads had been closed due to the rains and so deliveries were delayed… so we were also short on supplies….

We drove out to the opal fields and had a walk around looking at the deep shafts that were everywhere, mullock hills and old mining equipment. The whole area was like Swiss cheese with multiple holes – it looked a bit like a moonscape and reminiscent of Coober Pedy. Many of the residents live in dugouts.

Klaus was keen for noodling so could not resist having a quick scratch in the fading daylight…

We went back for dinner at the caravan park and planned the next 2 days in White cliffs…

Sunset over the caravan park was a typical outback sunset….. and the clouds were starting to abate…