4WD4life:: Paul L'Huillier :: Birdsville Trip

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Birdsville Trip - Sept. '08

Submitted by: Paul L'Huillier
30 Sep 2008
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Hi all

We're home at last. Thanks for the messages and birthday wishes. We were in remote areas for most of our time away so it was a nice surprise when we finally had phone reception.

We had a great three week trip and managed to drive all the way to Birdsville in Qld without too much difficulty. We went with the Albury-Wodonga 4WD club and spent two nights camping at every stop, so we had a rest day from driving and a chance to explore each place.

Our first 2 nights were on a sheep station near Ivanhoe (near Hay in NSW).

Then some rain near Menindee meant that the road from Ivanhoe via Menindee to Broken Hill was closed so we had to go through Wilcannia instead.

At Broken Hill Paul and I visited the Living Desert park where there are two walks with various markers around the trail to show points of interest corresponding with notes on a map. One walk was around a Flora trail where the wild flowers were just starting to come out, and where we saw some stunning Sturt Desert Peas. The other was around a cultural trail where there were aboriginal story poles, a mine and models of miners, replicas of aboriginal shelters, and much more. There is also a Sculpture Park at the top of a hill, where there are 12 giant stone sculptures made during a 6 week symposium 10 years ago by a group of 12 sculptors from around the world. We did all the walks.

We had 2 nights at Broken Hill, then headed for Willow Springs on the eastern edge of the Flinders Ranges in Sth Australia. We camped in a lovely grassy clearing there and it was really beautiful. We spent our rest day doing a 70km self-guided 4WD (called Sky Trek) where there were 40 points of interest with accompanying notes and a mud map. It took us 7 hours and included some challenging hills and descents. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

The next part of the trip to to drive 350 km to Marree then about 500km along the Birdsville Track, to Birdsville. It was too far to drive in one go as the roads are all unsealed and are quite rough in parts, so we drove about 285 km and then spent two nights at the ruins of an old town, Farina. My birthday was on the rest day there, and very memorable.

Paul and I went walking for a couple of hours in the morning, along the route of the old Ghan railway, and then through the ruins of the old town. The buildings are of stone and mostly still standing, but the woodwork has rotted so the floors, roofs and doors have gone.

In the afternoon the wind increased, and soon we were in the midst of a huge dust storm which raged for about 6 hours. It became still in the evening and we were able to come out of our tents and vans and cook a meal, but then it blew up again at 1.30 a.m but from the opposite direction, and those with tents, most of which blew down, were forced to pack up and sit in their cars till dawn.

We were fine in our Tvan, and were shocked when we woke up at 6.30 a.m. and found nearly everyone packed up ready to leave! We thought we must have slept in. I'd brought a birthday cake to share but it was still packed away. We didn't have it till 3 nights later.

We drove from Farina to Marree and up the track to Mungerannie Road-house where there is a camping ground by an artesian bore. It is like an oasis in the desert. Lots of bird life around a large billabong, and a "heated swimming hole" where the warm artesian water comes out of a pipe into the pool. Very nice.

From Mungerannie we drove the last 300km to Birdsville, but not without incident. In one section the small stones on the track were sharp, and our group had 3 punctures within a kilometre. We had new tyres and Paul had dropped our tyre pressure when we left the bitumen so we were lucky, we thought. it wasn't till we got home and checked a slow leak in the rear right tyre that we discovered it had a 5 cm bolt impaled vertically into it. We think we must have picked that up later, as we didn't notice a problem till we reached Moama at the end of the trip.

We had 3 nights at Birdsville, tea at the Birdsville pub, a visit to the golf course which was covered in flowering shrubs, photo attached, (but Paul and I played one hole just for the experience), a visit to the Birdsville race course (the races had been 10 days earlier), and a visit to a working museum (working pumps and other old machines and devices plus lots of old items like we had at home when we were kids). The flies were very friendly in Birdsville and we all valued our flynets. A car rally came through on our second day, and they stayed one night before heading off at 2 minute intervals the next day. They were travelling from the Red Centre to the Gold Coast. Several people offered to buy our nets.

From Birdsville we headed further east in Qld then south into NSW, stopping at Windorah, Charleville and Bourke where the group broke up and went their separate ways. Paul and I camped a night on the bank of the Murrumbidgee river near Hay before going to Moama to visit Paul's mum who is in a nursing home in Echuca, and 3 of his sisters who live in Moama. He also has an uncle and aunt living there, so it was a good opportunity to visit them all before we came home to Mt Beauty.