The Simpson Desert and Other Stuff

Once we had given our notice at Birdsville, it made no sense to hang around while we waited for our job at Arkaroola to commence, so we decided that we would cross the Simpson Desert. We knew that we had a vehicle capable of doing it and we also knew that there was no way that we would skull-drag the caravan over it - in fact, the National Parks folks don't even like trailers or camper-trailers being dragged over it.

This required us to come up with some sleeping arrangements. We have no portable mattresses, no air mattresses and no tent. The obvious solution was to lay the seats down in the car and sleep inside it. The problem was, what to do with the other stuff that we would need to carry? We reasoned that we would need a tub with non-perishables in it, a tub with cooking utensils, a pot, coffee pot and other nicknacks in it, a small stove, water, the fridge, laptop, satellite phone, chairs, clothes and bedding (including pillows.) We could carry firewood, and a shovel on the roof, but that was about all because of the spare tyre being up there.

The only way we could make it work was to use the doona from the caravan bed, along with one sleeping bag as a mattress, place everything on it as we travelled during the day, then put everything other than the bedding on the ground outside the car each night and use the remaining sleeping bag as a cover. We had enough fuel capacity (184 litres) to cover the distance, even via our proposed route along the rig road, which was the longest way to cross. I was a little concerned that we would be able to deflate the low-profile tyres sufficiently to get good traction (bearing in mind that I am allergic to shovels), and also concerned at the fact that we only have one spare tyre. The last issue was that the tyres were the standard, factory-issue, road tyres - not off-road tyres.

I ruled out deflation of the tyres after realising that we were able to traverse Big Red with the tyres still inflated much harder than I was prepared to run them for this crossing (we had 26 pounds per square inch of pressure for Big Red and I was thinking of dropping them to 20 for the crossing). I was still worried about the single spare but eventually discounted that as well, reasoning that sand would not cause us any issues (forgetting all about the rest of the journey after the crossing.)

The plan, therefore, would be to cross the desert, call in to Dalhousie Springs for a look, drive up to Mt Dare, which is just inside the South Australia - 10 Km from the SA - NT border, stay the night at Mt Dare and then continue on to Alice Springs via the Old Ghan railway line and stay three nights at the Alice before heading across the Plenty and Donoghue Highways to Boulia in Queensland. From there we would head south through Bedourie and south again to Birdsville, where we would pick up the van and head for Arkaroola, once again via the Birdsville Track.

The last things that needed to be done before we set off  was to buy a Desert Parks Pass and hire a satellite phone, both of which could be done at the Information Centre at Birdsville. The satellite phones are all provided by the Mt Dare Hotel. You hire one at Birdsville and hand it back when you get to Mt Dare. We would not be making social calls on it, it would purely be used as an emergency tool. It was $140.00 that we couldn't risk not spending.

It was late morning when we finally got away from Birdsville and we were at Little Red around noon. The "serious" desert crossers all go over Big Red to start their journey, but we had already been there, done that - and so it was that we dropped the tyre pressures to 22psi, loped over Little Red and were on our way. We hadn't even reached the second dune of the more than 1100 dunes that we were to cross, when we came across our first Dingo. It wasn't overly concerned at our presence and trotted off quite slowly.

Soon enough we were at the base of the second dune, which was somewhat more challenging than Little Red but we were over it reasonably easy. About six dunes in I had to take a few runs at the slope before working out whether I needed to be in high or low range, how much run-up to take, what amount of throttle would be needed and so on. From there on the learning process slowly became an automatic response and we had little difficulty cresting the dunes.

To give you some idea of what the desert is like, the dunes are spaced at different distances as you drive along. Sometimes the flat part between the dunes, known as the swale, could be a couple of kilometres, while the gap between others is almost non-existent. The dunes are generally covered in sparse small shrubs, grasses and spinifex. The wheel tracks up and over the dunes are devoid of growth but the strip between the wheel tracks will often be spinifex that has been pruned by vehicles going over the top of it. There are no real trees as such, except at Eyre Creek and a place that is called "Lone Gum".

The approaches to the dunes become quite lumpy due to vehicles having insufficient traction and digging ruts with their spinning wheels. This can be caused by people not letting their tyres down sufficiently or applying too much power to maintain traction or even forgetting to put their vehicle into four-wheel drive. Dragging trailers and the effort that is required to do so is another major cause of the phenomenon.

The ruts that are created are not directly opposite each other on the tracks up the hill. What often happens is that the ruts will be, for example, causing the left front wheel to drop as the right front wheel is climbing out of another all the while the left rear wheel might also be climbing out of a rut as the right rear wheel drops into one. The result can be a horrible diagonally opposing lurching of the vehicle that has the ability to throw everything inside it all over the place. The key is to get the speed just right to minimise the effect of these ruts and still be able to get up the slope. Going down the other side of the dune is much more controllable.

Things can get somewhat rearranged by the "whoopty-doos"

General opinion is that the dunes are easier to cross from west to east due to the shape that they form under the erosive effects of the prevailing winds. What can happen, and did happen to us, was that so many vehicles attempt the crossing from west to east that the approaches on that side get terribly cut-up, while the eastern slope remains reasonably OK because vehicles are coasting down them. This meant the eastern approaches, the ones that we had to climb, weren't as bad as the western slopes, the ones that we were coasting down. We got lucky.

We didn't even get as far as Eyre Creek on the first day, due to our late start. In fact we covered only about 60 kilometres. The good thing about camping in the desert is that sooner or later there will be a significant clearing in the swale between the dunes, where you can make camp on level ground. The dunes themselves provide some shelter from the cold desert winds and there will sometimes be larger than usual shrubs to also provide shelter. Lighting a fire is permitted but you must carry your own firewood in.

It was a cool evening with perfectly clear skies as we set up for the night. The stars came out one by one and soon the skies were filled with them in the clearest display that you can imagine. We had our campsite all to ourselves and we could almost hear our own heartbeats, such was the tranquillity of the place. In the light of the fire we could make out the eyes of Dingoes as they circled us at a safe distance. They soon scarpered when I banged a couple of sticks together loudly. From previous experience with Dingoes, I knew that I would have to leave our rubbish on the roof of the car to stop the four-legged beasties from getting into it during the night.

 

The first night - note the stuff that ends up on the ground.

Our first night of sleeping wasn't so good. Only having a doona and a sleeping bag as a mattress made our bed pretty firm and it was hard-going on the hip bones. At least we were warm enough and it had only taken a few minutes to put all of the tubs and the fridge outside on the ground to give us room for the bed. I awoke feeling reasonably OK, but I wouldn't say that I was chirpy and neither was Sue. A couple of freshly brewed coffees helped a lot.

Our friend, Jeff, from the Mt Dare pub had told us about a campsite 14 Km east of the Knolls' Track. We were hoping to make that at least, and even then we wouldn't be halfway across the desert after two days. The dunes weren't really any tougher but it soon became apparent that we wouldn't even get that far by the end of day two. We crossed the dry bed of Eyre Creek, a waterway that has thwarted the crossing attempts of many a traveller when it has been in flood. It was all we could do to not stop and pick up some of the bountiful firewood around the creek

On this, our second day, we came across a lot more oncoming traffic - often convoys of vehicles - and it was usual for the parties travelling in each direction to co-ordinate the necessary passing manoeuvres. Because the track across the desert is just a couple of wheel ruts, when cars have to pass, someone has to get off and go bush. As we were travelling alone, it usually made more sense for just one vehicle (us) to get off than for three or four vehicles to do so (each one crushing the delicate desert flora.) So it was that we found ourselves waiting at the side of the track for several minutes at a time, waiting for the procession to pass. This all added to the uncertainty of getting to our desired camping place before nightfall.

While the desert certainly has a beauty of its own, I confess that before we reached Poeppel Corner I was starting to find the going a little bit tedious. About 20 Km before turning south toward Peoppel, the dunes take on a more haphazard nature. No longer do you have discernible swales between the dunes. These are instead replaced by a mass of interlinked smaller dunes that look somewhat like the tormented waves that you see in films showing ocean storms. There are some high dunes, some low dunes and dunes where the track twists and turns to forge a path around impassable peaks. A higher level of concentration was required and that meant less time to take in the views.

A wave of relief swept over me as we finally reached the point where we turned south and ran along the edge of a massive salt lake. This was flat, level track and out on the lake we could reach speeds of up to 60 KPH, remembering that the tyres were deflated and any faster would not have been wise. We were now travelling parallel to the Queensland - NT border, a few kilometres inside Queensland. All too soon we had to turn west again and the last section to Poeppel Corner likely to take just a few minutes. Well it should have, but the make-up of the dunes was different again. These, too, were jumbled dunes but were much higher than the previous section.

Finally we reached the sign indicating the northward turn to Poeppel Corner, the corner where the NT, SA and Qld borders all meet. The corner was named after Augustus Poeppel, the surveyor who first physically plotted the east-west line that separates SA and the NT. He did so using chains to measure distance and he placed carved wooden markers at intervals along the way. His corner marker ended up in a salt lake but when he returned from successfully charting the border he measured his chains and found that they had worn, and therefore lengthened slightly, meaning that the marker that he placed at the corner was actually in the wrong place. A subsequent survey undertaken by Lawrence Wells relocated Poeppel's marker post to where it is today.

A replica of Poeppel's (relocated) marker in the distance and the new,
apparently accurate, concrete marker in the foreground.

We drove the short hop into the corner and took the opportunity to take photographs. Let's face it, we wouldn't be coming back! We didn't linger at Poeppel's. We were still well short of the halfway point of the crossing and only had two days left to finish the trip - all of our subsequent accommodation bookings were contingent on finishing on time. Back on the lay-line the going was pretty slow. The dunes were messy, to use the only term that I can think of to describe them. Finding places to pull off for passing traffic was more difficult and we had to wait while one traveller extricated himself from a minor "bog".

At around 4 PM we called it quits for the day, still 14 Km short of the place that Jeff had recommended. We would not cover the 14 Km before nightfall at the speed we were doing. The campsite for night two was much the same as the first night. It was in a small swale between dunes and had some light shrubbery as a bit of a wind-break. Again, the stars shone brightly, putting on a dazzling display, but this time the tranquillity wasn't the same. Every now and then I swore that I could hear music. Sue couldn't and I guessed that I must have been hearing things. We saw no Dingoes that night.

Night two: Note the stuff still in the car that has to be removed so that we can sleep.

The bones that had begun to ache from the previous night's hard "mattress" were complaining even more the next morning. Still, coffee and breakfast soon took our minds off of them and we continued on our way. We only crossed three dunes before coming across a party of four vehicles camped in a swale. The source of  the music! The next objective was the Knolls' Track. This track departs from the "French Line" that we were currently on and heads south, passing the WAA Line and meeting the "Rig Road". The Rig Road was constructed to allow trucks, drill rigs and equipment to traverse the desert in the days when they were exploring for oil. The caps of the dunes had been covered in a clay road base to make the dunes firm enough for those vehicles to cross. Much of that capping still remains due to the minimal effect of rainfall on them. It is a desert after all.

We chose to follow this route, which is significantly longer than going directly across the French line, for no other reason that it was a way of escaping the masses of vehicles taking the short route. As we headed south the flatter route in the swale between the parallel dunes allowed us to pick up speed in places and it wasn't long before we had reached the "knolls". These knolls are smallish, flat-topped, mesa-like mounds that are formed out of what appears to be a limestone or gypsum substance. They are whitish in colour as opposed to the red colour that the dunes had been to this point in time. They stood perhaps 20 metres higher than the surrounding ground. They are of great significance to the aboriginal people of the area.

The Knolls. Didn't do much for us, but significant to the indigenous people.

It took less than an hour to travel the Knolls' Track and soon enough we turned onto the Rig Road. The first section, around a salt lake, had its clay capping wholly intact and we made good time along it. We stopped for lunch at the southern tip of the salt lake, before heading back into the dunes. Where the clay capping was intact on the dunes, the going was great. Where the clay had eroded was actually many times worse that the dune would have been without the capping. Side-tracks have been made by previous vehicles and the trick was to take the correct side-track and leap off it onto the proper track at the right time. Failing to do so could have meant falling into a huge rut and getting hopelessly bogged, or worse, rolling the vehicle over. Thankfully we got it right every time.

Along the way we took a short deviation to look at what was once a lone gum tree in the desert. Conservation-minded 4WD enthusiasts, realising that vehicles parking under the tree in search of shade would compact the soil and prevent moisture from reaching the roots of the tree, built a wire fence around to stop access. Naturally, with such protection given it, the tree responded by flowering, fruiting and subsequently producing many offspring around it, thus dethroning itself as the "Lone Gum".

Back on the rig road we got somewhat confused when a vehicle that we had seen heading away from the lone gum as we were approaching it, came at us from the opposite direction a half an hour after we left the tree? Maps came out and we tried to figure out whether he'd taken a wrong turn, whether we'd taken a wrong turn, or whether one of us was simply going in the wrong direction. It didn't help that it was overcast and we couldn't use the Sun as a guide. Our GPS told us that we were going the right way, the map was confusing and my brain was inclined to disbelieve the GPS.

In the end we soldiered on the way we had been going and the next junction confirmed that we were going the right way. Who knows what the other bloke was up to? The next section of dunes were well spaced, but the swales were badly corrugated, so no speed increase was possible. By now all the dunes seemed to be the same and the whole thing was beginning to get a little ho-hum. Another turn gave us a good run along the swales and then it was a last section of pretty big dunes before we came across the grave of one of the oil rig workers who asked to be buried in the desert after he died. At this point the track turned north and I knew that we had a long, easy, run between the dunes for at least an hour. We chose to make camp in this section.

I was very happy with our progress. The long run in the swale the next day would see us advancing quickly and after that there was a short section of the WAA line to cover before we intersected the French Line again, for another short section before the dune part of the desert was done and dusted. We were back on schedule. We did have another problem though. It had been overcast all afternoon and it looked like it would rain. Where would we put the stuff so that we could sleep in the car?

Day three: With rain threatening, we very intelligently parked in a claypan.

As we finished dinner and were preparing to sleep it did start to rain. We stashed as much stuff as we could on the front seats, the plastic tubs were ok out in the rain and we used a plastic-lined travel rug to cover the car fridge. The gear would be OK but if it rained too much we weren't going anywhere in that clay in the morning! It was warm and steamy in the car. We couldn't have the windows down or the rain would get in and worrying about getting bogged made for a fitful night's sleep. Thankfully the pitter-patter of rain on the roof lasted for no more than an hour and I was able to lower a window to get some air moving in the car. Bloody modern vehicles and their efficient seals!

Our last night sleeping on the hard surface had the usual cumulative effect on our bones and I could see that Sue was completely over it. Thank goodness we would be sleeping in a comfortable bed - any bed - at Mt Dare that night. We ate breakfast, necked down a couple off coffees and took off, cruising the swale at speeds of up to 70 KPH. It was a pretty morning with some lingering cloud being lit up by the early morning Sun. The desert air had a freshness about it, no doubt invoked by the dash of rain the previous night. We were making good time and all was well with the World.

We turned onto the WAA line and conditions worsened appreciably, but were no worse than anything that we had done before. We fell into the groove of building up speed as we approached a dune, washing off the speed as we went over the whoopty-doos (as we started calling them), thrusting the nose of the vehicle over the crest and completely throttling off and allowing the remaining momentum to carry us over the top. We would then just roll down the other side, often under brakes to prevent too much build up of speed, before relaxing for a short time on the next swale. We had long since lost count of how many dunes we had crossed and had no idea how many were left.

Surprisingly, the intersection with the French Line seemed to greet us quite soon and we turned to make the last run westward toward Purni Bore - the end of the dune section of the desert crossing. This section of dunes were smaller and relatively easy to cross, aside from the quite choppy sections. Like the first part of the crossing four days ago, this section must be traversed by all vehicles - regardless of the direction in which they are travelling. All vehicles means maximum wear and tear on the track. We also had quite a few oncoming vehicles to deal with, but progress was good and we were at Purni Bore by mid morning.

Purni Bore is a wetland that was created when a dud oil well penetrated the artesian basin and allowed the water to come to the surface. From what I remember it was capped but the cap eventually gave way and the water escaped at full flow. The pool that formed eventually formed a wetland just as the one at Mungerannie did, but there was a problem.... The unrestricted flow of water was taking pressure away from other wells in the artesian system. Eventually it was decided that something had to be done, but capping the bore was no longer an option. The wetland had become its own closed ecosystem and the animals and flora there were completely dependant on the availability of the water. To cut the supply of water would kill everything there.

Algae and mineralisation at Purni Bore wetland

Thus, the flow was reduced to a level where the pressure in the artesian basin could be maintained at a suitable level and the flow at the bore was sufficient to sustain the life there. There is also a nice campground at Purni bore with lovely hot showers (the bore is naturally hot) and washing facilities.
We had a photo opportunity at Purni Bore and then continued on our way to the mound springs at Dalhousie.

After the dunes had ended I pumped the tyres up a bit. I shouldn't have. The road to Dalhousie was dreadfully corrugated and it was more comfortable to drive off of the road wherever possible. It was slow going and I was grateful to arrive at the springs. There are several mound springs in the area around Dalhousie Spring. The springs are where the water on the westernmost fringes of the artesian basin are able to make their way through natural fissures in the Earth's crust and leak out at the surface. The dissolved minerals in the water eventually solidify around the opening and a mound forms. Some of the mounds in the area today are quite large.

Before we got to the camping area we came a cross a sign to a rubbish pit. With four days worth of rubbish in a bag on the roof of the car, we were happy to pull in and get rid of the trash. It's the little things eh? We went on to Dalhousie Spring. The spring is large and warm (about 38 degrees C where you swim) and has wooden ramps allowing swimmers easy access to the water. There was even a selection of inflated floating "toys" for people to lounge on while in the water. We were there in the middle of the day and were quite safe but we are told that at dusk the mosquitoes come out in thousands and the unwary can get bitten horribly.



Dalhousie Springs

We didn't go for a swim as we needed to get to Mt Dare before dark and we still had a fair distance to travel. We took the opportunity to look at the campground which was disappointingly dusty. With all of that water you would think that they'd grow a bit of grass? There were toilets etc. there and these are cleaned by the Mt Dare staff occasionally. The Rangers clean them at other times.

We set off for Mt Dare, electing to go via the shortest route after being told that all roads out of Dalhousie are "crap". I still wonder if we made the right choice. The road we took had a long section that was made of nothing other than rocks. Rough rocks! Some as big as soccer balls. There was not one skerrick of road-base or soil between those rocks. It was an absolute shocker of a road and how we got through there on low-profile tyres and not sustain any damage, I'll never know. Naturally our speed was dead slow and it seemed like we would never cover the remaining few kilometres to our destination.

Finally we came across a tee junction and the road to Mt Dare was as smooth as silk. Someone had been over it with a grader very recently. Hallelujah! We wheeled into Mt dare around three in the afternoon and received a friendly welcome from our friends, Jeff and Karen. The crossing was officially over....

Mt Dare at last!

Next: Mt Dare, the Ghan Line, Alice Springs and back to Birdsville.