Bruce’s Garmin says was -0.3C last night so must have been cool out of the sleeping bag. Always bring your beanie if swag camping. Your ears get cold.

Python Pool at the base of the hills on the Roebourne-Wittenoom Road is the target today.

While having lunch under some coolabahs a rail inspector pulled up to check that we were OK. His job nowadays is basically to restart the robot trains when they stop for some reason. As the computer programs running the trains get better he is called on less and less frequently to climb up on the engine to call Perth control and hit the ‘GO’ button on the dashboard. Steve gave us a mine issue bladder of water and disappeared over the hill. The water bladder leaked until we emptied it for dinner that night.

The dirt road was bad but turned to bitumen near the Roebourne Road turnoff. Unfortunately the Roebourne Road itself soon turned back to dirt, with the worst corrugations of the ride. As the corrugations were the full width of the road we just had to suffer until some better road came along.

Awesome view of Fortescue Plain from top of 120m range. The last four kms to Python Pool were bitumen, presumably to reduce maintenance on the steep descent from the plateau.

We were in Python Pool an hour before dark, time for a quick swim and to see where we were setting up camp among the picnic tables and hopefully away from the ants. The night was splendid with stars and darkness. Lovely.