Ten days into the Canning Stock Route and the pattern’s pretty clear: no matter how much you plan, the Canning decides the pace. In this episode I’m rolling through the Great Sandy Desert, trying to keep the crew and the vehicles in one piece while the days blur together (day 11… 12… 11 and a half… who knows). We crawl from well to well, deal with long grass and the very real snake risk, and I run through exactly what I’d do with a snake bite kit—stop movement, mark the bite, compression bandage from the extremity up, splint it, keep them calm, and get proper help. As the pressure eases a bit, I’m still checking the basics—like shock temps—because corrugations will cook gear if you let them. Then the big thing: our first salt lake “gatekeeper” after recent rain. Soft edges, swampy floodplain vibes, and everyone’s on edge because once you commit, you’re in that fuel zone where turning around stops being an option. So I make a bit of a “rite of passage” bush pudding tea to settle the nerves, and honestly, it works—confidence matters out here. We also hit the reality of remote travel: rattling parabolic leaf retainers loosening bolts, and even scavenging bolts off an abandoned vehicle to keep us moving. One lake at a time, one dune at a time—because if one of these next legs stops us, that’s the end of the run.