Early morning we packed up and were ready to hit the road at 7.30. By 7.45 we hit the Birdsville Track. This is the 517 Km route (316 miles) the drovers used to take when taking cattle down from QLD down to Marree and thence to Adelaide. Birdsville is a few kilometres North of the South Australian border and this was where the customs were collected. Bores have been sunk intermittently about every 50km along the track to enable the cattle to make the long trip. Now big trucks carry the cattle down it.
This was to be our first major off road driving experience. We were excited and wary. We drove out of Birdsville, past the race track, then off the bitumen onto ‘The Track’. We hit the chalky road with trepidation, and…..well, nothing. It was flatter and better road than any other unsealed road we had coped with so far! A bit of a disappointment really. The guide books had said an ordinary car could possibly do the trip, but that hadn’t really registered. The first vehicle we passed was a lone biker wrapped up against the wind and dust – that should have told us it was not going to be too bad. We had 315km to go before the first camp stop at Mungerannie Roadhouse, there was however some amazing scenery along the way, passing the Sturt Stony Desert on our left (yes, more fields of rocks and pebbles) and the red sand Simpson Desert on our right. For a while we listened to African music on the ipod, which made me want to look out for lions and tigers (“…and bears, oh my!”*). After a couple of hundred kilometres we suddenly came across a large dam/pool of water just by the road, with 2 large jabaroos (birds) taking a drink and appearing to be in the middle of their courtship. These fled as soon as Darren approached to take video (what wouldn’t!), but first gave a sort of dance with their long necks going up and down, reminding me of emus, to perhaps warn him away? Seeing water in the vast expanse of nothing was surprising to say the least, and we supposed it to be one of the old bore holes for cattle.
*Wizard of Oz
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