DAY 106 ARKAROOLA TO MANNA HILL via YUNTA

13 June 2008

DAY 106 Pilbara – Kimberley Trip

ARKAROOLA TO MANNA HILL via YUNTA

There is lots to do and see at Arkaroola but we do need to be making our way back to the East. We will come back here some time to explore the area in depth. We had a little friend visit us late yesterday. It made itself at home on and near the Oka for quite some while.

In the morning I spent some time downloading onto my blog but ran out of internet time to finish it. As the downloads were being very slow I thought I would finish doing it in Broken Hill.

So we set out from Arkaroola on what proved to be a nice day. The rain has past and the road from here to Yunta is finally open to all vehicles. It had been closed to vehicles over 3 ton up to now.

It is nice to have the opportunity to see the road from both directions. The views and impression of the area can be so different from the other perspective. Driving out of Arkaroola you didn’t get the impact of the ranges as you did driving in.

After the turn off to Yunta the landscape changed considerably.


We were back into flat gibber country with salt bush and the occasional mulga bush and distant ranges at times.

I only found out recently that gibbers is an aboriginal word meaning a ‘rock of throwing size’. How about that for a bit of trivia. I think that some of them would be quite heavy to throw.

We had lunch in a dry creek bed. The number of dips in the road were incredible. You braced yourself every time you came to one as you didn’t know what to expect.

Near Frome Downs the soil colour and scenery kept changing. ln places it looked like a patchwork of colours ranging from orangy browns to a light sandy colour. In places though it looked very desolute.

In other places the colours were rich and the contours of the hills were interesting.

There were signs of pastoral activity along the way as there were a few Southern Cross windmills to be seen.

The only traffic we met were trucks and semis for the whole length of the road. We were quite anxious when several trucks came from the opposite direction carrying exceptionally wide loads in the form of mobile homes. The first two had no escort vehicle to warn you. We could see them coming from the dust in the distance.

It was very interesting to see a hill with a sand dune on the side of it.

There were still a number of puddles of water to be seen along the road although most of it was now dry.

The distant ranges were a constant reminder that we were close to the Flinders area.

After 300 kilometres of unsealed road we finally hit the Barrier Highway at Yunta. We finally stopped not too far away from Yunta next door to the Manna Hill pub. They have created a lovely rest stop here next to the 140 year old pub in a little town with a population of 7. We visited the pub and had a drink before retiring to our Oka for dinner and a rest.