Saturday evening just on sunset and the sleepy little town of Birdsville saw a tired and grubby walker pulling a strange-looking contraption into town. First stop was the pub and a beer. No risk of it going to my head though as the locals kept my reception very low key which suited me fine. A few drinkers mumbled "good on yer mate..." as I walked into the bar and that was it. A good Australian down-to-earth reception!

Getting There

A lunchtime departure after meeting Pete at his place and packing his food and gear and then onto the road west. The drive up from the Blueys was uneventful, overnight near Wilcania, Leigh Creek and then to Dalhousie for a swim in the hot springs before heading up the road to Mt Dare, Andado and East Bore. But on the rough rocky track to Mt Dare "bang" went one of the rear leaf springs (broke right through near the front shackle pin) leaving the trusty old Hilux sitting very low on one side and with the diff at a strange angle. Hmmm. Into Mt Dare (www.mtdare.com.au) and Dave Cox organised a new set of springs to be flown in on the mail plane from Alice. A day of waiting then Pete and I spent a few hours fitting the new springs and off north again. A quick look in at Old Andado - fantastic, must get back for a longer poke around - and then north in the dark to find East Bore. Had a bit of fun finding our way through fences and eventually turned the engine off at the corner post of the fence around the bore tank paddock. A group of inquisitive dingoes followed us to camp and spent a good part of the night howling close by. Welcome to the desert.

The Trip

Spent Thursday morning packing the paddy wagon and got away by lunchtime, crossed Causurina "swamp" (a dry clay pan with clumps of lignum) and entered the western edge of the desert.

The days were all long with pre dawn starts and I was mostly walking until after sunset. I got into the habit of doing this initially to make the most of the daylight to get enough distance in each day (I knew I needed to average 20km per day to make it with my water supplies) and towards the end just kept going at the same pace. Early in the trip I was doing about 16km per day due to the high number of dunes per kilometre, the spinifex cloaked swales and the generally hard going. The daily distance gradually increased until at the end I was doing about 33km per day with the lighter wagon and fewer dunes in the eastern desert.

Camp each night was wherever I found myself when it got too dark to continue. I'd try and find a valley out of the persistent southerly breeze with a dead acacia or gidgee for firewood. I camped on top of some of the more scenic dunes early on but after a while found these too breezy so opted for the valley camp sites for most of the trip.

The weather was generally cool with daytime maximums around 23 degrees and down to minus 2 degrees at night. For five days in the centre area I had north easterly winds that lifted the temperates to about 33 degrees in the afternoon which made life a bit harder for a while - it's much more difficult to stick to a 4 litre per day water allowance when the temp is in the 30s.

As planned I stayed on my cross country route and navigated on a compass bearing (with daily GPS checks) to the geographic centre of the desert and then to Birdsville. After crossing the Honeymoon Mine road/Hay River track I dipped south a bit off my course to pick up some areas where the dunes weren't quite as dense. As I drew closer to Birdsville I was running into more and more farm tracks, fences and locked gates and 5km out of town I gave up trying to cross the fences to stay "cross country" and followed a particularly sturdy-looking barbed wire fence south to the dirt road that I followed into Birdsville.

During the walk I crossed the Colson track, a couple of 4WD tyre tracks around the centre marker, a few seismic lines (mainly overgrown) between the centre and the border, the (very well made) Honeymoon Mine road and a couple of unmapped seismic lines in the Queensland section of the desert. I saw no other people during the trip apart from Pete who found me crossing close to one of the farm tracks a few hours out of Birdsville. After two weeks of radio silence he was keen to see if I was okay. I walked into town just as the sun set.

The Landscape

I found the 1:250,000 topo maps to be surprisingly accurate regarding sand ridge placement. These are close together in the west - often about 200m apart and they gradually became further apart as I moved east. On the eastern edge of the desert the sand ridges are over 1km apart. Vegetation varied considerably throughout the desert. The eastern and central section is heavily covered in lumpy spinifex that made hauling quite strenuous and slow. In the area around the Honeymoon track the valleys were getting wider and the vegetation sparser which made for much easier going. In this area I started to see more and more valleys with gidgee growing. These valleys offered very good travel and beautiful campsites.

Water

I allowed 4 litres per day and this proved adequate. Early on it was only just enough. The very high work loads in the first week were energy sapping and I often went to bed thirsty (although physiological indicators seemed to indicate I was still reasonably well hydrated during these days). As the load on the wagon reduced I found 4 litres to be more than enough on all but the very warmest days. Towards the end when I was confident of doing it in under the 20 days I allowed for I increased the daily allowance to make life a bit easier for washing out the billy etc. I even used a couple of litres to have a bucket bath on day 14. I certainly didn't want to drag too much water into Birdsville without good reason.

I didn't see any surface water in the entire trip.

Food

Breakfast was a bowl of muesli, a boiled egg and 300mls of banana Optimizer (Endura's very good carbo/protein drink). Through the day I ate something every hour - lots of energy bars (Cocochia), gels (Endura), electrolyte replacement (Endura), nut slices (from the fantastic Blue Mountains Food Co-Op), muesli bars (Carmen's excellent bars!), dried fruit and an occasional apple. Evening meals alternated between a Tinderry dried meal with buckwheat/pasta/chickpeas or a meal of pasta, orange lentils and a sachet of salmon. These meals would more than half fill my 2 litre billy and I easily ate the lot and still felt a little hungry. I'd often have "desert" of another Cocochia bar (high protein and fat) - and yes, I even enjoyed them right to the end! I had plenty of energy most days (some morning flat spots in the early days were cured by bigger breakfasts).

Despite working very hard on a relatively low intake of water I didn't suffer a single cramp, I put this down to the balanced diet and the Endura rehydration powdered drinks (with the magnesium). Many thanks to Sam Abbato and Kay Ridgeway for nutritional advice.

The Paddy Wagon

The design proved excellent. The harness and hauling arrangement worked faultlessly. I mounted my watch and navigating gear on the front wooden cross-bar which was great for taking bearings on top of every sand ridge. I tied a pocket from by brilliant Aarn rucksack (on board in case I needed to abandon the cart and walk out) in front of me which is where I kept my drink bottle, snacks and the GPS.

The leather strip I inserted between each tyre and the tube proved great for foiling the massive woody prickles although I had two minor punctures through the side wall (fixed by squirting green slime in) and one bigger hole from a woody stake while crossing the scrubby floodplains beside Eyre Creek in the east (fixed with a patch).

Near the Honeymoon Mine road I broke one of the axle bolts in the wheels that also shredded a wheel bearing. I replaced the bearing and luckily had a spare bolt for the cart that I was able to adapt to hold the wheel together for the rest of the trip. The bolt was undersized and too short but by watching it carefully I was able to nurse it along for the final 140km.

Brakes - based on my recce trip I had thought I might get away without brakes by descending dunes at a slight angle - the wheels would dig in to the loose sand and turn slowly. But the new cart had a narrower wheel base and I rolled the wagon (with me strapped in) a couple of times and had to improvise some brakes. These took the form of some lengths of acacia timber which were fitted with cord to rub against the tyre and slow the wheel down when I pulled on a cord from the front of the cart. These brakes worked well and all dunes were then descended straight down the fall line (with the cart staying upright from then on).

I left East Bore with about 160kg behind me (more than twice my body weight of 70kg). The wagon load decreased by about 5 to 6 kg per day.

The Country

Magnificent! The memories of the many nights under zillions of stars will stay with me forever. The remote and wild valleys of the eastern desert were especially beautiful with their gently curved swales carpeted in silver/green spinifex and bright red wind-blown sand cresting the dunes. The gidgee valleys in the east were a welcome change (and relief) after the physical rigours of the spinifex valleys and will be remembered fondly for their relatively open spaces and the glowing camp fires of the tough old timber.

Aboriginal Artefacts

I didn't spend much time looking about for artefacts but saw quite a few things in the west (including a plate-sized section of a grinding stone) and a lot in the eastern part of the desert. Mainly this took the form of stone tool chips in clay pans or on dunes and some stone arrangements in the east. I saw what might have been the remnants of old Aboriginal wells but I'm not sure if they were or just natural geological features (more study required for me!).

Animals

Every single dune crest had tracks from small reptiles, small mammals (mostly tiny hopping mice) and invertebrates. Often I'd see evidence in the tracks of the nightly travels and battles between these little creatures. One night a small mammal of some sort hopped onto my sleeping bag and scampered about. Every day I'd see dingo and/or feral cat prints as well as camel prints. I saw one herd of about 25 camels on day 7 just west of the centre. A large, tattered, old-looking wedge-tailed eagle circled around me just near the centre and zebra finches and willy wag tails were seen often (I don't know where those finches get their water!). I saw dingoes on day one and during the last couple of days - very brave and inquisitive in the west and very wary and evasive in the east (in the cattle country). Generally the desert felt fairly quiet - but winter is the time when most desert animals lay low.

Communications

I carried an HF radio that I could use to do a sched every few days with Pete so he could track my progress. I could also make a Radtel phone call if needed. That was plan anyway... until I killed the battery when my metal muesli bowl shorted across the terminals. I also carried a small EPIRB (an electronic distress beacon). So when the radio died we reverted to our back-up plan that "no news is good news". If I had any major dramas I'd use the EPIRB so radio silence would probably only mean that I had radio problems. Which is what happened.

I also carried a small UHF hand-held radio that I used from a position about 90km west of Birdsville (and north of the QAA Line 4WD track) to contact a four wheel driver 20km to the south who passed a message to Pete that I was okay and should be in town on Saturday or Sunday. Pete had arrived in Birdsville a couple of days before me and checked in with the police that there hadn't been any EPIRB activations from the desert. He then got my UHF message and then found me a few hours west of town as I walked across a gibber plain.

Thanks Arunta!

I made it across and the similarities with mountaineering were very clear to me as I trod the sand dunes over 17 days. While climbing a mountain, particularly a first ascent, it's a case of the mountain allowing us a path to the top and safely down again. While the challenges were very different in the Simpson it was definately a case of the desert allowing me through. There were many occasions when I thought to myself that the dunes wouldn't have to be much higher, or steeper, or with just slightly higher ridges of wind-blown sand on the westerly crests and I wouldn't make it across. Even just a few kilometres of bigger, steeper or loose-sand dunes would have made life very difficult out in the middle. But the desert let me through and on top of every crest I said a quiet thanks for allowing me to pass. On my reconnaisance trips I'd dragged my prototype cart around but the reality was that I was sampling a tiny bit of the desert and I was very lucky that the test areas were somewhat representative of the rest of the desert. Thank you Arunta!

And thanks again to everyone mentioned on the main page for helping in so many little ways to make the trip a reality! It was hard work but I loved every minute out there.

Lucas Trihey

July 2006

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