This trip's obectives were to cross the
Simpson from east to west
on trail bikes supported by 4wd's.
I had organized it to coincide with my 60th birthday and my sons
18th, thinking that it may be the only time we could both be legal
and fit enough to do the 400km ride together.
In the end the 4 cars and 6 bikes crossed the desert safely despite many issues.
Vehicles
Bikes -> RMZ250 (sons),Drz400 (
mine) ,Xr400, TTr230,KTM 250,Ktm 450.
Cars -> Patrol 4800, Nissan Navara, Range Rover and 105 series Landcruiser.
People 14, including 2 female and 5 male bike riders.
The vehicles left independantly from
Melbourne to meet up at the "always burning" campfire at
Copley C'van Park some 500km south of
Birdsville.
The two main vehicles (our Patrol and the Navara) towed
trailers purpose built for the trip each with 3 trail bikes.
Each car had 4 drivers, and in our case enabled us to leave a day later and drive thru the night to do the 1400km to
Copley at 90kmh by sunset friday evening.
Next day we travelled the
Birdsville track leaving at 8am after getting the
Copley coffee
shop out of bed to serve breakfast.
Apparently not many take the shops 7am opening time literally.
After a great breakfast, we headed off to
Marree and to get our desert parks passes but we arrived on the day that new owners took it over. The old owners had removed the eftpos BAR Scanner and taken all the passes as these were not part of the sale.
The new mob were in a panic and mad as hell when they realized our group needed 9 passes amounting to $945 worth of lost sales.
We left
Marree before the others and drove the track at 80kmh with our tyres at 24psi cold.
Our friends played tourist for a couple of hours and drove faster to catch us just as we entered
Birdsville some 8 hours later.
Next morning they awoke to 1 flat on the car and 1/2 flat on the trailer.
I checked their pressures which were 37psi cold.
The night before we arrived at the
Birdsville pub just in time to find out that they were low on food and had run out of desserts but still we had a good time.
A local, noticing that my son was wearing motor bike gear asked if he had come for the
Birdsville races.
No! not the horse races but the motor bike gymkarna races the next morning.
He invited us to attend and next morning my son and a friend rode to the track and he entered the main event, hoping that their Victorian Recreational Registration would satisfy any inquiring officals.
Against the much bigger bikes his Rmz-250 got the fastest time and we held our breath as another dozen riders tried to beat it, and "Mark from Victoria in the pretty gear", as the announcer had begun to call him, won by 7/100ths of a second.
He walked over and picked up the winners $375 cheque and we left town for Big Red immediately.
Well actually, via the
bakery where we had asked for vegetarian pies.
After some strange looks, the owner came out and said "We have just baked 300 pies for the event, but someone left the meat out, there now mostly pumkin pies, do you want some? "
We weren't sure if we were being had and that this was an attempt to claw back some of the prize money - but hey, I tried one and they were great so we picked up a dozen
as we left town.
The weather was perfect, I had watched the statistics and noted that it hadn't rained in
Birdsville for 3 weeks. On this basis I had made the last minute decision to remove my cars winch, chains and other items to save some 70kg of unnecessary weight.
Imagine what we thought when just before the
Big Red sand dune the road was covered by a lake some 150meters wide and 1/2 meter deep. We are fairly used to this but it was a pretty imposing sight for first timers.
Knowing the ropes, we drove a straight line thru the middle slowly and without issues.
However our mates behind went faster in their cars and bikes which resulted in two throughly soaked riders and one trailer and its bikes covered in mud.
Shortly after we arrived at Big Red for an obligitory play before making for Eyre Creek, our nights camping site.
Big Red was just a ball for the bikes which simply went straight up the hardest path and jumped over the top lip landing in the soft sand beyond.
It was now one hour from sunset, we had played enough and turned for Eyre creek, our first nights destination and the start of the real drive.
All the water had gone by Eyre Creek and its crossings was completely dry (30/6/8).
Whilst this trip was for the bike riders it was my wife's first ever desert drive.
In our preparation drives I had left her with a simple instruction -
"When there's a
hill, just
check its in first gear high range and accelerate to order".
Despite recent releases, the petrol 4800 Patrol still has the highest power to weight ratio of the big wagons and a wide torque spread. I was counting on this and to make the drive easier for my wife and to remove the need to change to low range.
I also retarded the timing 5 degrees and was running my smallest tyres, BFG AT 265/75/16's
On the way to Eyre Creek I followed close behind my car on the Drz400 with the rest of the convoy behind us, except for our son on his motocross bike who was already a long way ahead of the group.
We had set the Patrols tyres to 18psi cold and its trailer at 12psi and they were handling the track with ease.
We drove on in the prefect conditions for a while just cruising the dunes ,working the radios and getting into the rythmn for what would be a much harder drive to-morrow.
Close to Eyre Creek at a dune peak, my wife swerved across the track and just avioded a red 20lt fuel container. I stopped and picked it up, at first thinking I hadn't secured it properly. It was full of petrol but it wasn't
mine!
One of our bike riders had also picked up some full water containers.
As we pulled up on the edge of Eyre creek to
camp I saw my son ahead talking to some bike riders and they all came back to
our camp.
Then a story began to unfold - 3 riders, dad and two sons, on heavy Drz650's were attempting to cross the desert unsupported to raise funds for cancer research under
the banner of "TheHardWayRound".
The petrol was theirs and had fallen off an overloaded bike, so was the water.
They had long range 30lt tanks fitted and heavy paniers.
They were stuffed physically and had just decided to turn back.
They had effectivily lowered their 3 bike's air intakes for more power and drowned one bike in the lake in front of the
Big Red dune and had taken 3 hours to pull it apart and get it going again. Somewhat exhausted, and with heavily
laden bikes they had made hard going of this first relatively easy section.
One rider had gone down and was trapped under his bike without the strength to lift it off till a radio call brought help. But he was knocked around and together with the loss of fuel and water, their journey was over.
Very dejected they set up their single small tent some distance from our group.
They dried out a few things around
our camp fire, but they would not except help from us like a hot meal or even a cup of coffee.
To do this would have apparently compromised the basis of their sponsors support.
I walked over to them and handed them their fuel back. This seemed to create a sort of physcological breakthru and they couldn't stop thanking us enough.
Over the next few hours the mood lightenend and they seemed genuinely impressed that families like ours were tackling the desert together.
Our landcruiser and Navara friends offered to carry all their excess gear which amounted to some 20kg per bike and by the end of the night they agreed to tackle the next section to Peoppels.
But they would ride ahead and maintain their independence.
Our trip plan, did not call for us to travel together but to meet each hour or so at 30km intervals across the desert. The bikes and cars had GPSes loaded with these waypoint. This allowed for various people to travel at their own speed, whilst staying within radio range if help was needed.
Next day 9am after a memorable
camp, we headed off. The dunes crests began to get steeper and softer and it soon became apparent that pulling the
trailers wasn't going to be easy, any mistake would result in a bogged vehicle.
We dropped tyres to 16psi (10 for the trailer) and continued on.
After a couple of near misses in my car and a couple of snatches of other vehicles I decided that it was time to introduce my wife to locker diffs which I had completely negelected during our practise drives back
home.
This gave us back the traction but she wasn't always picking the best lines up hills.
Our friend in the fully decked 105 landcruiser now took over the lead of the cars and his help saved the day and my wife drove glued to the back of this car for much of the remaining trip.
To support the above process my brother and I stayed near the cars on our bikes, often riding to the tops of dunes first, looking out for oncoming traffic and assisting by calling the track ahead.
We saw only 3 or 4 other vehicles this day and our other bike riders were getting a bit bored, they often found themselves 1/2 hour early at stops and would make flat areas in the sand and play noughts and crosses against themselves till the chuck wagons showed up.
Approaching Poeppels Corner the
salt lake was pretty dry with slight mush off the track. Our new found bike friends on the Cancer research ride were already at Poeppels and had made much better going without their heavy loads.
We all collected for a photo shoot then found a
camp spot amongst the dunes an hour before sunset.
Some of our riders hadn't had enough and put on a bit of a show jumping over dunes etc whilst we set up
camp and got a nice fire going.
Another lovely day dawned and we headed off right on time at 9am again whilst our Navara team sleep in again, despite the owners best efforts to drag his two daughters out of bed.
West from Poeppel's is the heart of this track. It gets more barren and desolate and its just dune after dune. The sand was softer but not as bad as in previous years. However we made slow progress averaging some 20km/hr. After lunch a sand storm blew up swirling sand, dropping visibility,
particularly for the riders. Riding got harder and mistakes were being made.
Somehow my bike was the only one not to suffer a breakage.
"Thats because your so slow", said son to dad whilst cleaning oil off his now leaking fronks forks and trying to tape up his broken GPS mount.
The visibilty didn't worry my wife as she sat doggedly a cars length from the leading Cruiser. The Navara wasn't handling the situation as cleanly.
Lack of
suspension travel in it and its trailer meant it bounced around a lot more and it required a few snatches, but we pushed on.
We were behind schedule and pushed on towards the Colson
track junction and sunset. We probably should have stopped eariler as whilst the wind and blown dust was down, it was now very hard to see ahead as you approach a dune top where you swing north then turn at the top, straight into the setting sun and then swing south. Three more of the bikes had been dropped and broken lights by now and our Range Rover ended up on a precarious angle after partly slipping off the track edge. At one point I was following our Narava when it went over a steep off chambered dune, the girl driving it had the steering on the wrong full lock and the car was ploughing in setting herself up for a rollover. I radio'ed from my bike "Right hand down,
Right hand down" and she responded quickly and saved it.
This was a real heart stopping moment and I'm sure that only the trailer holding back the car prevented a bad scene.
We camped in the clear area about 500m north of the Colson/French line
junction after a hard day and were all in bed before 10pm.
We awoke early, to the sound of dingoes howling around
camp
and were all up early despite this being the coldest night at 0c.
Just as
well as running lighting for the
campsite had run down my battery and created much fun with a "Cruiser jump starting a Patrol" photo opportunity.
Everyone was in a good mood. We should make Dalhousie this night and we set off after the
camp rebels set up a 220g empty(almost) gas cannister vertically in the hot coals and after 1 minute it went off like a rocket shooting over 100ft into the air. Didn't see the dingoes after that and we all drove off in good spirits.
This last day was one in which I think we all fully appreciated the beauty of the desert. The weather was back to perfect and the dunes weren't quite as hard and were more scenic. The trail bikes enabled us to enjoy the trip more than I have ever done in the car. You would ride to the top of a dune, high above
the track and turn off the engine.
You could just sit there in perfect silence, taking in the
views whilst waiting for the cars. This was only possible as my son had now perfected his riding style and would simply ride up a dune face and jump right over the the switchback path the cars needed to take.
This left him far ahead of the rest of us and avioded unexpected oncoming traffic.
Bikes and oncoming traffic were my biggest concern on this trip, and whilst we used UHF15 amongst our group we had a second radio on UHF10, and this kept us aware of the few other vehicles.
By morning tea we were at the French/Rig rd and the main desert ride was behind us.
We stopped at Purnie
Bore for a last lunch together as we were to go our seperate ways from Dalhousie.
The Cancer research riders were still with us and whilst I made cappicino's they lunched on their vita wheat biscuit each, dipped in peanut butter and followed up with a handful of Sultana's.
Finally they excepted something from us - a can of cold soft drink!
They had billed their ride across Australia as the "HardWayRound" and I can assure their backers that they were true to their word.
Couple of hours later and we were all soaking in Dalhousies warm springs on another warm and clear outback day.
Time for goodbyes. Despite a whole stack of other incidents left out of this short note, all had made the crossing without significant injury and in good spirits. At the outset I was concerned about the girls on the bikes holding us up, but while they suffered more than their share of broken bike bits they had more than kept up.
Many firsts were achieved for our group, no one even got temporalily lost.
However the ladies that drove our cars pulling
trailers as their first
Simpson driving experiences deserve a lot of the credit.
I will probably never ride the
Simpson again but the memories we take away from this trip will last a long time and I would like to sincerly thank everybody involved, from those that helped build our homemade trailer to the seemingly endless construction of other special bits which allowed our Patrol to carry 4 adults, 3 bikes and all their gear and supplies across the
Simpson without the use of roof racks or even blocking our cars rearward view.
Our friends in the Navara and Range Rover now headed off to Mt Dare as Dalhousie camping wasn't too inviting and our "HardWayRound" riders re-fitted their
paniers and gear (minus the no longer needed jerry) onto their bikes and headed off on their way to Alice and more adventures.
We camped at Dalhouise with our Cruiser friends.
My riding was over so we loaded the worn out Rmz250 onto the trailer and my son and brother continued to ride to
Oodnadatta via Pedrika.
On this section the only nasty incident of our trip occurred when an oncoming Pajero effectively ran my son off the road on the gibber plains.
Thank goodness, he was able to get the front wheel up as the bike went over
the rock filled roadside ditch, at the cost of a few bruises.
I'd like to think the Paj driver just swerved to miss one of the many rocks lying on this track, and if someone can give me his rego munber, I would like to send him a postcard.
Fuel use - the manual petrol 4800 Patrol used 18lt/100km on the tow up and we made it from
Birdsville to
Oodnadatta using just the cars 145lt main tank which meant an excellant 25lt/100km for us towing the trailer.
My Drz400, ran out of fuel 1km from the
Pink Roadhouse 176km from Dalhousie and my son who was on it, laid the bike down sloshing just enough dreggs into the carbie for him to make it. This bike used 7lt/100km across the desert.
We hoped to get in some more riding on the way
home to
Melbourne, but my brothers XR400 had lost oil and compression and was out of action.
The back sprocket on my sons Rmz250 race bike had also stripped all its teeth and its chain was shot, but we picked up spares for it at Pt
Augusta.
We then spent another magic afternoon riding round salt lakes and jumping dune's at Yorkeys Crossing.
This last ride was just shear fun, except when we broke thru the crust on one lake, and it set us up for the remaining 1100km drive back
home the next day.
Robin Miller