Dr Livingstone I Presume?

Hi Skip

The desert is looking wonderful and the water, well in is like last year and still unreal.


Cheers



Stephen

Great pictures Stephen. The crossing looks fairly tame. What was Robin's report on the run from Poeppel corner? We leave on Friday for a Hay River trip. Should leave Birdsville in a couple of weeks.

Cheers

Peter

Hi Peter

Robin did not come down via Poeppel Corner. They got as far as camp 20 on the Madigan Line and were confronted by a continuous wall of water, so it was cross country down to the Eyre Creek crossing.

There is a bigger detour from Birdsville this year because of the flooding of Lake Nappanerica. The route follows the Border fence for a few kilometres before coming out at Little Red. The Simpson dunes are back to normal, soft and requiring four wheel drive. The Goonamillera crossing was rocky and around 400mm deep and no problems to cross....but make sure that you take the southern most crossing point. This was the easiest, with good access and departure points, while the first one was still muddy and deeper.

There still seems to be very few people out in the desert, as while we were camped out along Eyre Creek for over a day, there were only 2 cars that headed out on an east west crossing and two groups of 3 vehicles in total, including Robin's two vehicles that had come in from the west.

Have a great time out there and you will be doing one of the best Simpson drives.


Cheers


Stephen


Image Could Not Be Found
Image Could Not Be Found
Image Could Not Be Found
Image Could Not Be Found

Many thanks Steohen. I think we'll camp by the creek first night out from Birdsville. Can't wait to get started!

Cheers

Peter

Hi Stephen,
I just got home at 10pm tonight.
we actually got stopped at mcdougalls claypan about half way between 19 and 20.
we had to come south about 15 km to skirt that and head east to eyre creek . initially we went north to try to reach camp 20 but even though we were within 300 metres or so everything was under water.
we couldnt get close eneough to the creek to find the Kudderee crossing ( or even the track to it )
ended up having to backtrack all the way down to the bypass crossing but were up to several Km west at times skirting water before popping out along the dune that peters out about 1/2 a km west from the crossing.
Just on 115 km of cross country from hitting water to meeting up with you.
If others are interested its basically cross country from C16 (except for first 2 dunes) to C17 then onto Mudloo where track became a bit more distinct thru 18 and 19.
1 dune before mudloo took 1.5 hours to get across.
6-16 was pretty straight forward and only took 3 days one of which was a whole 11km as a rest day was called at Madigans claypan.so essentially 2 days travelling.
cheers
Howard

Hi Howard

Good to hear you got home in 1 piece and what a long drive you would have had.

It was great to meet you and Robin out in the Simpson.


Cheers


Stephen

Hi Min

It was another great Simpson trip. The dunes are back the way that they usually are, soft. Like I have said to a couple of people along the way, we headed out not for the four wheel driving which is always good, but for the life time experience of being able to paddle on Eyre Creek and Lake Nappanerica.

One thing that has changed is the track out to Big Red. Because of the flooding of Lake Nappanerica, the track now travels for a little way along the SA/Qld Border. The number of people heading out to see Big Red as a day drive have realy cut up a lot of the dunes from not running the correct tyre pressures. In some ways these were worse than some of the dunes out in the Simpson proper. I have lots of new plant images that I have taken and have purchased another local book to help identify some of the plant, if not I know that Val will come to the rescue.


Cheers



Stephen

What a site after 7 days of seeing no one.



Image Could Not Be Found

Hi Robin

Like wise it was a great pleasure to meet you and Anne, as well as Howard. Hope you had a good trip home.



Cheers


Stephen

Robin, you could be forgiven for thinking you were starting to suffer Desert Fever when you were confronted with a bearded Yeti paddling along in the outback. If it had been me I may have done a U-Turn and headed back up north.. :-) I'm sure had it not been for Fiona, you would have done exactly that :-)

Stephen I am intending on having a look at the Simpson in about 5 weeks (with a crossing from West to East), so hopefully some of the plants and bird life are still around.

Madigan is still set for April 2012 and Robins article has excuse the pun only wetted my appetite even further.. Hard to beat that area for its scenery and of course right now it’s even better.

Cheers Blaze

Hi Blaze

The desert is back to a normal crossing (apart from the water). Last year with all the rain, the dunes were very wet and made a crossing very easy, where as this year they are soft, just the way a Simpson crossing should be.

You will be surprised at the plant life out there, and I will be doing a blog alone on the wildflowers of the Simpson and the Birdsville Track.



Have a great trip.


Cheers


Stephen

By surprised, do you mean lots of plant life, we did a crossing back in about 2005 or 2006, can't quite remember but it was after the last real heavy rains out there prior to last year. That time the grasses etc were around a 80cm high and chats were nesting in the tops of them all over the place, flocks and flocks of badgies zoomed everywhere, so hopefully it is similar.

Cheers