Another beautiful sunrise, more camels, lots more dirt road and dust clouds from oncoming vehicles and we are finally in Laverton; the end of the Great Central Road. Laverton turned out to be a very nice looking tidy town, which surprised us a bit as we have seen it described as "uninteresting". There was a nice new information center in the town that had the best maps and info sheets on The Great Central Road we have seen. Pity we could not have got those maps and sheets in Alice Springs or Yulara before we drove the road.

We also saw this map of the Outback Way which puts the Central Road in perspective.

We did not camp at Laverton but moved on to Leonora, about 100km south. Leonora is another clean well kept town with a fair grocery store. It seems like the town depends for its life on servicing some of the nearby mines including the Sons of Gwalia Gold Mine.

The town caravan park was an interesting place, being occupied mostly by permanent residents. One lady that Nina spoke to, originally from Chicago, had been living in the caravan for 9 years and wanted to stay in the same place after her husband retires from the local mine.

The last photo is the dwelling of one of the caravan park residents that the other residents call The Hippie.

Residents who did not work at a local mine were almost all in the town to do some private prospecting.

While The Great Central Road is undoubtedly necessary for those communities along the road and for access to the various mines in the area the majority of traffic on the road is recreational. Like on the Tanami, we kept a count of vehicles we passed. The result over 4 days was:

  • vehicles towing either a caravan or camping trailer 58
  • 4x4 vehicles 67 (mostly fitted out for camping)
  • cars 15
  • motor cycles 4
  • bus 1
  • truck 1