Shortly after leaving the Olga's the road turned into more of a sand trap, quite wide, but with numerous sand drifts to negotiate. While it was not a problem for the Pajero it did slow us down a bit, so arrived later at Lasseters Cave than planned. We parked and walked the short distance to the cave, and were impressed by the relative beauty of the spot, quite in contrast to the isolation and dramas of the Lasseter story. 

If my memory serves me correctly Lasseter set off to explore central Australia and came back with the story he had discovered an absolute mega exposed gold reef, only problem was he had mislaid the detail of how to find it again. Some time later he again set off with the hope of rediscovering his fabulous gold reef. Unfortunately the expedition failed and Lasseter ended up living in the cave for many months alone until his food was exhausted, the creek did provide some water and kept him going longer than would be usual. He was finally discovered near death by some caring aboriginals and bought back to civilization, but died a short time after. The lost reef soon found itself embedded in Australian folk law and after many fruitless attempts by opportunists to find the location , it would seem it is where the legendary reef is to remain. 
 
Unfortunately for us, we were not destined to camp at the cave car park, unless we intended to ignore the plethora of no camping signs. We did chat to a fellow cooking his tea, who had ridden there on his push bike from Darwin?? a distance of some 2000 km and about half way to his destination of Perth. We tried to get out of him how he managed for water but somewhere between his German/English and our Australian/English that was to remain as much a mystery as Lasseters Reef. We did glean that he was planning to stay the night but I guess a push bike is a little less obvious than a Pajero 4wd.

We pushed on until the community of Docker River, nestled on the NT/WA border, quite a scenic little spot. We decided we would see if we could get some bread from the store, so pulled in and parked near the bowser's, noticing that like others in Central Australia they were fully enclosed in a cage. To save locking the car and both going in for a menial shopping spree Heather headed off on her own, and was immediately surrounded by a pack of rather dubious looking dogs. She managed to get through the first security fence, obviously there for this purpose and into the shop unscathed. She wasn't gone long when she was back with a loaf of bread and explained incredulously that not only was the fuel in a cage but every item of stock in the shop was (what there was). The lady who served her had only been manager for a week and had already given notice.

We were seriously running out of time and light, so again moved on, when to our surprise and pleasure, after only about 5 km we came on a designated camp site in a lovely glen of trees, surrounded by imposing hills. There was an honour tin, which we happily contributed our 5 bucks to and set up camp. Heather was amazed to find the toilets provided were actually of the real water flush type, with water.  It had been a big day, so we were happy to roll into our bed.
 
Next day we were up early, and Avan got the fire going for breakfast (proper fire place, plate and all), but rather than rush off we leisurely packed and enjoyed the birds and scenery for a while. Then we crossed the border and after about 70 km stopped at the Giles Meteorological station where the attendants were more than pleased to give us a guided tour of the installation and explain the importance of the information gleaned here to the predictions of WA's weather patterns and forecasts. We were in the process of moving from one building to another when a dingo nonchalantly trotted past. 

The tour was very informative and worth doing. After the tour we headed the 260 km onto the first town Warburton, and we joined most of the population by grabbing a pie for lunch at the roadhouse and took a drive around town. Then we headed off  into the nothing (the road travels from the Gibson Desert into the Great Victoria Desert) and due to new roadworks dumping limestone road base, managed to immediately blow a tyre, leaving us with no spare. 

Fortunately we passed the roadwork area and managed to avoid further problems until we had the tyre repaired, which saved me a tyre repair road side, in very hot conditions.
 
Tonkering along we spotted the first vehicle since leaving Warburton approaching from ahead in the distance, surrounded in dust. Suddenly the vehicle careened off the road and started weaving through the scrub, by this time we had closed the gap between the two of us and could see they had run down an Emu and were hoisting it in behind their Roo Bar. They jumped into the vehicle (a standard sedan) and accelerated, without looking, back onto the road, narrowly missing us, as we had now drawn level, all we saw as they passed was a row of gleaming teeth.We were left with the thought of how ironic it would be if we got clobbered by the only vehicle we saw in a 1000 clicks.   

We planned to stop at Tjukayiria Roadhouse (T.Js) for the night but arrived fairly early so instead bought some cheese and continued on, now having to clear the permit area before we could camp. (yes, every non aboriginal including Australians has to have a permit to travel the road and you can not buy petrol on the trip, to prevent it falling into kids hands where it may be sniffed)  Once we had cleared the area we set up camp and lit a last campfire to ward off the bitter cold and sat watching bush TV.