Sydney to Birdsville
From here on the blogs will mostly be written by me,
Katrina, so I’ll do my best to expand out on the snippets of information we get
via phone or SMS. I guess I can always make things up too – Graeme won’t know
for a while yet! A word of warning – I can chat & ramble a bit so you might
want to get a cuppa tea…..
Graeme and two close mates (Bestie and Drew) left 5am
Tuesday morning. They hadn’t even made it to collect Drew before they were
flagged down by a passing car. “You’ve left your back wheel carrier undone,
mate”. I don’t have a photo of the car but as with many big 4WD’s there are 2
spare tires on the back which need to be opened before you can even get to the
back door. One of the habits you need to get into when travelling is checking
these are done up BEFORE you start driving off. We’ve been caught with this
more than once…..
Next stop was on the freeway before Newcastle with a fuel
filter light warning. False alarm – something else not done up properly. I am
only laughing about all this because I wasn’t in the car with them.
Coffee break at Merriwa which is a lovely country town which
has the Festival of the Fleeces every year – where else can you see sheep walk
down the main street wearing red woollen socks. Also a great place to break
down if you ever feel so inclined…..that’s a long story from a previous
dramatic holiday. The other good thing about this town is that it’s about the
time where you first get the ‘wave’ from passing drivers. That’s the sure sign
you’ve left the country and are on holidays.
Who knows what happened between here and Bourke where they
stopped for the night but I believe the muesli worked a treat for sensory
entertainment. Luckily for them it’s warm out there so the windows are down….
Decided on Wednesday that Birdsville was going to be too far
in 2 days after all. Instead they stopped after Windorah at a lookout called
Deon’s Lookout. An amazing view from the top of a jump up way out across the
plains, it really is big sky country. Also
the home of the most mozzies all of them have ever seen. Graeme counted 32
waiting for him on the swag flyscreen when he woke this morning. My job this
evening was to source a mozzie net for him. One more thing for Brendon to take
up with the cart at the start of June.
In Birdsville by 11am Thursday and apparently they had the
best $5 shower ever. It’s only been 2 days without a shower and he’s already
saying things like this. How will he be after 3-4 weeks? I hope they still have
lots of water in Birdsville at that time….he’ll be needing it.
Speaking of water, a lot of the roads into Birdsville have
been closed these last few weeks because of the rain they’ve had. Graeme said
that there are massive stretches of water on the sides of the road and
everything is very, very green. After lunch at the pub, and I’m sure a beer or
two, they’ve headed out into the desert. I heard that he rang from the top of
Big Red and all he could see on the other side was water. Perhaps the inland
sea is real after all.
Big Red is the ‘first’ of the Simpson Desert sand dunes. 30
metres high and it’s the dune that
everyone wants to conquer. There’s Little Red on the main desert road itself
and then you travel up the pan to reach Big Red. It’s not for the faint
hearted. I’ve been a passenger once and that’s enough. Every time since I’ve
got out and walked to the top. Someone needs to take the photos after all, hey.
For the next 3-4 nights they’ll be out in the desert -
Poeppels Corner (SA/NT/Qld border) and burying an emergency supply of water and
food at around the ‘halfway’ mark for later.
I imagine there’ll be many fires like this and a few more
stories that can get shared with the wife……
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