I wake just as the sun as risen. A quite cold night with a bit of wind.
We both are repacking the cars. The dunes are much rougher than we expected and thing are really bouncing around. I’ve got all food on the back seat, and we putting all the swags and chairs on top of them to stop the bouncing around.
A few convoys pass our camp, all traveling west. Seems we’ve hit the crowd leaving the Birdsville races.
Around 9:30 we pull out and continue heading east. I do so with a bit of trepidation, that beaching has knocked a bit of the confidence out of me.
We’ve got 33k to get to the Colson Track turn off, here we head south to pick up the WAA line. As well as a bit more variety, the WAA is meant to be quieter with less traffic.
The dunes are pretty easy, and even though a few have deep ruts on the east side, I know how to handle them now.
As I have two radios I have one Ch 26 to talk to the guys and the main one on Ch10 which is the channel used in the Simpson. After a bit I hear a call out about a convoy of 2 heading west, they sound clear so I figure they must be close, but is at least 3 or 4 big dunes till we come across them. It seems they’ve come from the Birdsville races, so maybe the track is a little busier than normal.
The travel is slow, we’re averaging about 10-15km/h. While I expected it, and don’t want to rush the experience, it just seems unnatural to travel this slow.
On the whole the dunes are pretty fun and the driving is quite technical. We cross another party of 4 cars, and I can hear there must be a guy traveling solo behind us.
3 Hours later, we’ve travelled the 33ks to arrive at the turn off to the Colsen Track, so we’ve averaged 11km/h. Amazing.
While we’re taking some photos, another guys come through and a couple of bikers pull up for a break too.
We now head south on the Colson’s track, as it is south, it predominantly runs between two dunes so is a bit quicker to navigate. It is rough though so that tempers the speed. We need to travel 19km down this track to meet up with the WAA line to continue our journey east. A few K’s before the WAA line we pull up for some lunch. Needless to say we’ve not see or heard of anyone on this track.
We hit the WAA line and the dunes start immediately, although unlike the French line, it clear this track is used nowhere as much, as there is a clear centre verge with plants.
The guys are ahead and I’m just coming up the second dune, I can see it’s softer sand with some real scallops, I just don’t have enough momentum. Up until now I’ve been able to walk up the dunes, but this is just too soft. I back up and take another attempt. As the track is so rough it’s hard trying to find that balance of enough momentum, but not so fast that everything bounces to bits. I don’t find it….. Not enough pace again. So I back up a bit further, I try to realign the car, but I bogged… Going backward….how the hell??? I radio the guys to hold up, grab the tracks throw them under the rear wheels and I’m out pretty easy. Tracks thrown in the back, I have another go and make it over. Mmm, I wonder what the next 100 or so dunes will be like. In the end there are some more soft ones but we make it over them with relative ease.
I had read about it, but what makes the WAA line is a bit interesting, in quite a few spots the track veers to the left or the right at the top of the dune, what makes that more interesting is as you crest a dune, pretty much the only thing you can see is your own bonnet, so getting a clear visual which way the track goes can sometime be difficult.
10 or so K’s later, the guys pull up. Ahead, the track seems to split in two, straight ahead and one that veers off to the left. We figure we’ll just go straight. As we crest the dune, the two tracks make sense. In front of us is a huge drop. It would be really hard to drive up, so the other track is a “chicken” track for those travelling west.
We make the intersection of the Erabena track, and start heading south, again we’re between the dunes, but the corrugations start. We hit the rig road, take a short dog leg, then take a track down to Lone Gum.
Lone gum is interesting enough and we find a place to setup camp. It’s nearly 5. With the flies, there is little point camping up too early.
OK, we’ve been on the road for 8 hours, and we’ve travelled 125km. So much for the fear we’d drive though the desert too quickly.
On the plus, the fuel economy is better than expected.