In Jul-Aug we did this trip:
("We" = me, my 96 Troopy, my brother, my cousin, my brother-in-law, his brand new Terracan, and from
Alice Springs, my brother's partner. Ages: 64, 54, 60, 62, 40)
Coffs Hbr -
Bourke - Cameron Cnr -
Arkaroola area -
Lyndhurst -
Oodnadatta -
Painted Desert -
Coober Pedy - Anne Beadell to Neale Jn - Connie Sue (Sth) to
Neale Breakaways - Connie Sue (Nth) -
Sydney Yeo Chasm -
Warburton - Heather Hwy - Abandoned Gunbarrell - Bungabiddy Rockhole - Docker - Olgas - Uluru - Kings Canyon -
Finke River Gorge -
Palm Valley - Goss's
Bluff - West Macdonnells - Alice -
Rainbow Valley -
Owen Springs track -
Lambert Centre - Mount Dare - Dalhousie -
Simpson Desert (French Line, Colson Track, Rig Rd, Knolls Rd, French Line) -
Birdsville -
Quilpie -
St George - Coffs Hbr - 9900km, 6 weeks.
Painted Desert: Fantastic - we spent 2 nights there - walked, climbed, photographed etc. Don't miss it if you're out that way. All roads good.
The Breakaways (near
Coober Pedy):
Well worth the detour - lots of great photos there too, but perhaps not as fascinating as
Painted Desert.
Anne Beadell Hwy: A truly wonderful experience if you want remoteness, solitude, a feeling of really being way out in
the desert. Corrugations terrible - intractably relentless. But we'll do it again. And maybe even again. Better heading west than heading east because the road starts terrible (Mabel Ck - Emu) then gets better all the time, whereas west-east, the road just keeps getting worse! ... and worse.
Ilkurlka - wonderful people there. Diesel $2.10 but worth it!
Neale Breakaways: Turn south at Neale Jn. Connie Sue Sth is like the Strzlki - about 6 lanes wide. 50km to signposted turn off. Very like
Painted Desert on a smaller scale. Don't miss this lovely place if you're out that way.
Point Lilian,
Point Sandercock: Back up Connie Sue to Neale Jn and keep heading north. Both these breakaway areas are fascinating, with lots of caves (not
limestone ones) showing evidence of long-ago habitation, and great
views.
Sydney Yeo Chasm: Further up Connie Sue, turn right, track to chasm about 70km, 3 hrs. This was probably the highlight of our trip, not because of large scale dramatic scenery, but because of its utter remoteness and very personal scenery. We spent 3 nights there and explored, walked, star-gazed (Meade L90 8") and generally relaxed.
Waterfall Gorge - nice to have a good look at - but Connie Sue getting steadily worse as we went further north.
We went 7 days - Ilkurlka to
Warburton - without seeing another soul. Wonderful.
Heather Hwy: First half very fast and easy. Second half every bit as bad as Connie Sue - maybe worse. But great.
Abandoned Gunbarrell - a bit of an anticlimax after Anne B, Connie S and Heather. Mt Samuel was a great place to spend a night. 360º
views. Binoculars at night found one single light somewhere on the horizon, completely invisible to the naked eye. No idea where it was.
Bungabiddy Rockhole: 27km up the Sandy Blight Jn road.
Well worth a visit.
Camping for a night at Uluru: The second most revolting night we spent. The most revolting was at
Alice Springs. Couldn't even use our own wood for a fire.
Camping at Kings Canyon: Don't! King's
Creek is much better (from our perspective, anyway)
Finke Gorge 4WD track: OK the whole length. Beautiful
views around
Running Waters.
Boggy Hole a great place to
camp. Good
hill to clamber up right at the
camp, with great
views from the top.
Well worth doing, and travelling north, takes you right to
Hermannsburg and the
Palm Valley track.
Goss's
Bluff: Go inside it - don't just go past it.
Redbank Gorge Woodland
Camp - a very nice place to
camp.
Rainbow Valley: A must. Very beautiful.
Mt Dare: Spent a long time talking to Pat Stabler. A sad time for her after Ian's fatal accident - she told us exactly what happened, and it was a million-to-one thing. Very sad. She is a fabulous person, very brave, and very kind. Also very helpful in suggesting a route to take across the Simpson. She said she felt it is the right thing for her to stay out there for the present, but doesn't know for how long. Vale Ian.
We took over 4000 photos between us. I'll get some photos of a few of the less
well known
places posted to the
Forum in due course. In the fullness of time. Very courageous.
Magellan XL to IBM Thinkpad/OziExplorer to Xenarc 12" monitor. Worked fabulously the whole trip, despite the attrocious corrugations. Moving Map is simply fantastic. We always knew EXACTLY where we were, and it helped us find a some very-hard-to-find junctions.
Used Google Earth and OziExpl to make and calibrate a series of large scale photos of the whole of the Finke Gorge, and used ExplorOz track-file downloads to get and show on the pics the exact path taken by whoever uploaded the .plt file. So using Moving Map with those pics we were able to navigate the whole Finke Gorge on photographs, almost tree by tree. Fabulous!
Graham Fraser