After departing home and travelling to
Birdsville via
Broken hill,
Tibooburra,
Cameron Corner, and Innaminka we decided to have a good rest at Ian and Ruth's caravan
park for a couple of nights.
Their hospitality is second to none and their coffee is great. Highly recommended by all members of our group.
The
bakery at
Birdsville has good bread, ours was still fresh after 7 days without any traces of mould.
It was good to be able to catch up with an old work colleague (Helen) who now resides in
Birdsville and works for a company who own 5 stations in the area.
Starting our trek at Big Red we witnessed a fellow in a BMW attempting to return back over the dune. He had only come out to play from
Birdsville and was not going to cross
the desert. There was no way he was even going to get back over the dune, so after several attempts and then asking for assistance, he was told that after all of our group cleared the top he would be snatched over. But unfortunately he was too impatient and cursed our leader and was left there to wait for other assistance.
The desert was certainly a lot softer and had some great drifts on top of the dunes since our last crossing. We did have to do one recovery which used two cars for a double snatch on a dune along the French Line that has been cut up quite badly.
We did a bit of zig zagging spending six days in all before departing to Dalhousie.
Not a lot of traffic there this trip, but maybe it is still a little early for the main stream tourists.
The desert is very dry, and it was a good experience to see it this way.
My vehicle managed the crossing quite easily, and when we filled up at
Oodnadatta it took 110 litres after 808 K's. The vehicle is a 3.0L TD Patrol.
13.6L/100K's, or 20.7 mpg.
We returned home last Sunday (June 4th).
Cheers,
Geoff.