Simpson Desert to Birdsville

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I haven’t written anything down for the past few days. Too knackered? Too much beer to drink? Who knows?

Today I am typing this up in Birdsville. The rest of the desert was a lot of fun driving, very interesting changes in scenery and vegetation, and a lot of slow driving. The change in vegetation between one dune and the next was amazing. Hard to describe, really. We had some challenges on a few dunes but made it through OK. Touching wood (my noggin) I didn’t need recovering at any point although I did take a few attempts at various hills.

There wasn’t much in the way of wildlife unfortunately except for a few birds, hawks and a dingo on the road near the end of the track. The evidence of life was plentiful with fresh tracks and scats of rabbits, dingoes, camels and some other unidentified.

There was no water in any of the creeks or salt pans that we needed to drive through. Probably a good thing because we may have got a little stuck!

At the end of the track we got to Big Red. The biggest sand dune we were likely to find. It is famous for being difficult to get up in using the trucks. We ended up all getting to the top to have some lunch. Neil got stuck (tee hee hee). I snatched him up and over as he was only one metre short of the top. We had some lunch and then headed into Birdsville and some bitumen – imagine that!

After camp was set up we headed to the bakery for a Curried Camel Pie. It was great. Like beef really. After that we had a go at the beer in the Birdsville Hotel. It is a great little pub. Plenty of people there and beer on tap.

To wrap the night up Paddy and I went to the local Aboriginal Community Centre for the NAIDOC week celebration BBQ. There were some words said by various people from the community and council, a welcoming dance from the local school kids and then a feed of yellow belly, kangaroo, stew and chicken. Really great stuff.

We’ll spend another night here while we resupply and some of the blokes go on a scenic flight and then head towards Innamincka, with a few detours.

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Comments

[Bec]

howdy
some great pics in this entry, esp Tony off the ground!