A beautiful night sleep beside the creek and I wake up just as the sun is rising.
We packup, however this time, everything is covered in sand. Nick goes for a dip in the creek, he’s gamer than I am, it must be pretty cold.
We cross the creek and the water crossing is both deep and rough in places. The bypass track takes us a few k’s north as it follows the eastern side of the creek. It’s amazing how wide and deep it looks in places.
About 30ks back to the main road to Birdsville.
Like yesterday, there is this amazing line between the vivid green grasses and the patchy desert flora. Like someone has drawn a line.
We make it back to the main Birdsville – Simpson Road, and see the other end of the detour sign. Apparently, the main Eyre Creek crossing in less than 1km up the track. The Troopy couple later mentioned they took a detour to take a look and that it’s not super deep, just really soft muddy sand so really easy to bog.
Even though we’re out of the park, and past the creek, there still are a few big dunes to go, then we crest a dune and see it….. “Big Red”. The 5 or 6 track up make it instantly recognisable. We pull up at the bottom and see a few cars try the main track to the right… and fail. With George’s power issues and my roof rack, we elect to happily take the chicken track to the far left. I don’t feel a need to prove anything.
This track is steep, but the sand is pretty well compacted so it’s much easier than I feared.
The view from up here is just sensational and we take it in and watch a few other guys attempt the climb. Eventually a few…..with a hell of a run up and hitting it at over 80km’h make it up.
The view to the east is great too. We can see where the Big Red Bash is held, the markings in the dirt is unmistakable.
It’s a few K’s to the south when we hit the tar, reinflate the tyres and drive then 30 odd K’s into Birdsville. I dump some rubbish and George makes he’s way to the mechanic.
We’ve been able to look up the code and the mechanic confirms is some solenoid on the Turbo, so that explains the loss of power, but fortunenatly, also indicates it’s not something terminal in the engine. After 2-3hrs the mechanic can’t even find the solenoid let alone see what’s wrong. The recommendation is to get it to a Toyota dealer. The closes one is in Broken Hill!, well at least going anywhere in the direction of home. We have a chat and agree we’ll continue on to Tibooburra as planned, but we’ll go home via Broken Hill rather than White Cliffs.
After 12 days of camping, we decide to treat ourselves and we book into the Birdsville Lodge. “Lodge” my butt, these are just workers dongas, but they’ll do me for a night. I later find the hotel has Motel rooms that looked nice, but they were more than twice the price, so I’m find with what we booked.
We had in the schedule staying two nights, but we got here early afternoon. It’s not really the place to do a full day of sightseeing, so I suggest to the guys to get the washing on, have dinner at the pub tonight and we can move on again tomorrow.
So a few loads of washing on, I post some blog entries I’d written, but had no internet to post. A couple of phone calls home and before I know it, it’s nearly 7pm.
Greg and I go to the pub, and the place is really busy.
A little while later George and Nick turn up and we order dinner, I really enjoyed my meal. Back into the main bar and we see the Troopy couple again. We swap some stories, and some photos and have a good old chat. They’re heading north for a few days so we probably won’t see them again.
Around 9:30 and we’re some of the last in the bar, so they call last rounds and we say goodbye to them. I’ve really enjoyed tonight, the pub had a great atmosphere, I was a bit concern the reputation of the “Birdsville Pub” might not be able to stand up to reality, but it did. Highly recommended.