25 June 2026

Back to the highway

My alarm went off at 3:30 am.

Bob and Tom had another big day ahead of them, so before anything else happened, I had to get them back to where yesterday’s ride had finished.

That meant retracing the 4 km gravel road from Mimbi Caves to the Great Northern Highway.

Four kilometres doesn’t sound like much.

On that road, it took a good 15 minutes.

Yesterday we’d driven into Mimbi in daylight, surrounded by that extraordinary rocky landscape. This morning we were doing it in darkness, the headlights picking out the gravel road ahead.

I dropped Bob and Tom back at the highway and returned to camp to pack up.

Lucky looked thoroughly confused by the whole arrangement.

What’s going on, Mum?

Fair question.

I’d already been backwards and forwards before the day’s 200 km journey had even begun.

An arty-farty morning

By the time I was back at camp, the first light was beginning to appear.

And everything looked different.

The vans caught the early morning light. Sunrise reflected in the windows and mirrors. The sky shifted through soft pinks and purples while the rocky landscape around Mimbi slowly emerged from the darkness.

I couldn’t stop photographing it.

Maybe I was going desert crazy.

Or maybe I was just having an arty-farty morning.

Either way, after being awake since 3:30 am, I thought everything looked like a painting.

Actually, I wished I could paint it.

By around 6 am, I was driving the gravel road back towards the highway again.

This time for good.

Now the 200 km begins

Back at the Great Northern Highway, I’d already been driving for about an hour.

Now the actual day’s journey began.

Mimbi Caves to Halls Creek. 200 km.

Time to find the boys.

The landscape in that early light was spectacular. Red earth, pale grasses, distant ridges and colours that seemed to change every few kilometres.

Yesterday I thought the landscape was stunning.

This morning it was showing off.

Larrawa Station

Larrawa Station had been one possibility for the night.

If Bob and Tom stopped there, the day would have been shorter.

They didn’t want to stop.

They decided to push on to Halls Creek, making it a 200 km day.

We also met a lovely family driving out from Larrawa. It was one of those brief encounters with people along the road that became part of the journey. They told us Larrawa was a great place to camp.

Not for us today.

The boys had decided.

Halls Creek it was.

Is that a dead animal?

Some strange things were lying beside these roads.

At Larrawa, I spotted something on the ground and thought it was a dead animal.

Nope.

A coffee cup lid.

A very old-looking coffee cup lid.

Biodegradable?

Hmmm.

Later, I did it again.

Another dead animal.

Nope.

This time it was the lid from an ice cream container. I eventually found the rest of the container in a nearby bush.

Apparently I’d reached the stage of the journey where rubbish was beginning to look like wildlife.

Waiting for the boys

Lucky had a run around while we waited.

Then it was back into the van.

The engine was running, the air-conditioning was blasting, and Lucky sat up front while I kept watching the road.

Eventually, two tiny figures appeared in the distance.

Here come the boys.

Bob and Tom were still pedalling east.

And we still had a very long way to go.

110 km to go

Then came one of those road signs that puts the day into perspective.

Halls Creek 110 km.

We’d already been going for hours.

There were also plenty of signs for “pools” out here.

The only problem?

None of them seemed to contain any water.

You could camp at some of them, though.

Roadside lunch

Lunch was another simple roadside meal.

Pasta, peas and a tin of tuna.

By now there wasn’t much ceremony involved. Find somewhere safe, pull over, get the food out and eat.

But beside us were these beautiful purple wildflowers.

You didn’t see many flowers out here at this time of the year. We were travelling through the desert in winter.

When we did see them, they were glorious.

And behind them, seemingly everywhere we looked, were termite mounds.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

Some were tall and narrow. Others stood together in little groups.

We even started mistaking them for kangaroos when we saw them in the distance.

One group looked like a little family.

The wind

By 3 pm, Bob and Tom had been riding for more than ten hours.

They’d started at 4:30 am.

And the wind was relentless.

Again.

This was becoming one of the defining features of the ride.

You could look through the windscreen and see a beautiful, empty road stretching towards the horizon.

But for Bob and Tom, there was nothing easy about it.

Every kilometre still had to be ridden.

And today there were 200 of them.

Halls Creek

Late in the day, the landscape changed again.

The road began to curve.

Ranges appeared ahead.

And then finally, there it was.

Halls Creek.

We’d made it.

Bob and Tom had ridden 200 km from Mimbi Caves to Halls Creek, after starting their day at 4:30 in the morning.

Another huge day was behind them.

And another extraordinary stretch of the Kimberley was behind us.

Tomorrow: Halls Creek to Warmun, 170 km.

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 27 June 2026. View my original Facebook post →

From the road Originally posted during the journey on 25 June 2026.View the original Instagram post →