Duncan Road

17/7/14 – Now we should have paid attention to the name of the rest area we stayed at last night. The words, cliff and lookout should have set off some sort of warning in our heads. But it was getting late, dark and we needed to stop so it didn’t jell. The moment we stepped out of the car it was howling and it did so all night. The canvas did a good job of keeping the cold aspect out but flapped all night so we both slept lousy.

Ngumpan-Cliff-Lockout-4 Ngumpan-Cliff-Lockout-3

Duncan Road starts in Halls Creek and goes around the back of the Bungles up to the Victorian Hwy in Northern Territory. It’s a 441km scenic dirt road, that we were led to believe was good to excellent. Well the first 40km isn’t what we would call a good dirt road. It was corrugated, had wash outs and ruts. Windy and hilly so you can’t get up a lot of speed, it was scenic and has several points of interest along the way that require a short detour. One you do drive by is Old Halls Creek.

Creek-Crossing-Ducan-Road Ruins Ruins-1 Ruins-2 Ruins-3After 40km it opens up and the road improves heaps to a good dirt road but not as scenic.

About 220km along we hit a big patch of bull dust. Not so bad, apart from we had a convoy of 4 caravans coming down our side forcing us to move even further over. We had to stop as we couldn’t see a thing and ute and trailer got covered in dust.

Duncan Road crosses between WA and NT several times. We had lunch in WA, afternoon tea in NT and tea back in WA. We eventually found a spot off the road to stop for the night.