Auski Road House to Marble Bar.

From the roadhouse, (a combined fuel servo & caravan park with nothing else around it – so set up much like many stations we have seen) we turned north on the sealed road to Port Hedland after adding a bit more air pressure to our tyres.

After a lot of dusty bumpy roads it’s fair to say we savoured the chance to drive with less attention to the road & more to ‘sight see’. When we turned eastward some 90kms further north we were met with a decision to make. Turn left or right at Woodstock.  Right was dirt & would have taken us to Nullagine, left was bitumen at least for a while, taking us to Marble Bar. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. We intended to visit both on a round trip from Marble Bar to Carawine Gorge, & down Skull Springs Rd to Nullagine & back to Marble Bar (May make more sense if you look at the route on our map). Our friends Alan & Lorelle had recently been along this road to Marble Bar & enjoyed camping at a waterhole on the Tambina Creek. Their description made it sound very appealing. And so turned left & we shared the sealed road with frequent ore truck road trains who were carrying out from the mine at the end of the bitumen, just past the Tambina Ck camp spot. Our CB radio was well used as we would discuss with the truck drivers how best to let them pass us on what was a narrow & winding road. They all knew the road like the back of their hands & arranging for us to slow at a suitable spot ahead made things easy & was appreciated by the blokes earning a living.

Tambina creek camp spot was as good, if not better than we had been led to believe. A relatively small waterhole but with a large variety of birds, able to camp right on the water’s edge in a manner that gave us day long shade & lots to look at. Better still we had it all to ourselves for the two days & nights we stayed there.

The road onward to Marble Bar was pretty good, we knew to expect that from Alan & Lorelle. Like all of the Pilbara region we have seen it was picturesque, particularly Glen Herring Gorge which we stopped off to walk into.

Marble Bar seemed like a friendly little place despite it’s dubious claim to being Australia’s hottest town. (It was a mild 31.8 degrees whilst we there). We did some minor shopping at the general store for a few supplies – Eggs – $6 a dozen 😉 Filled our water tanks, had a yarn with a couple of folk in the pub over a beer, another yarn with the schoolteacher out in the street (he was interested in the Tvan), visited the visitor info centre (open on a Sunday morning) & then went to the town’s swimming pool (free) for a shower, before taking off to check out the natural attractions of the ‘Marble’ bar which gave the town it’s name (they were mistaken – it wasn’t marble – it’s jasper) & Chinaman’s Pool (once the market garden area which fed the town back in it’s original gold rush days).