Muloorina to Mungerannie
It was finally the day to hit the famous Birdsville Track for our crew of Jeeps and wannabe-Jeep Toyotas. I’d guess that every Australian, especially 4×4 drivers, has heard of the Birdsville Track. This track used to be quite remote and dangerous, crossing three deserts (Sturt Stony Desert, Strzelecki Desert, and Tirari Desert, but over the years has been graded and is now a popular tourist track (still unsealed, but in pretty good condition).
First, we made a stop not too far away from Muloorina, 55km to the southeast at Marree, to stock up on fuel, water, and groceries. Marree is the starting point to both the Birdsville Track (heading north) and the Oodnadatta Track (heading west), and is a friendly place to fuel up and re-stock before tackling either of these remote tracks.
You may be wondering (or perhaps you haven’t thought of) what it’s like to “stock up” on supplies and fuel in one of these tiny outback towns. Well, I can tell you that the groceries are sparse and expensive at the best of times (especially fresh fruits and vegetables – canned is usually the way to go to save $$$), there’s rarely fresh bread or meat (usually only frozen available – and a limited selection at that), the fuel is expensive (so far the most we’ve paid is $1.99 per litre for Regular), and sometimes drinking water must be purchased rather than containers filled from taps (in Marree, it was $12 for 10L of water).
We’ve seen $3.50 for a 95g (normal sized) can of tuna and $7 for a tiny jar of peanut butter. Our preferred brand of muesli is almost never available out here, and any muesli being available at all is a 50/50 chance. Many times we just make different choices and no worries. Sometimes we’ll just accept the additional cost for an item we really want (like that peanut butter I mentioned). But it certainly makes you think about how much it must cost to run a store out here, and how carefully the perishable inventory would need to be managed – certainly can’t keep heads of heirloom lettuce around waiting for weeks for someone to cough up the $14 to buy them. And never mind whether they would even survive the trip across the desert to get there.
From Marree it was pretty much a straight shot 216km north along the Birdsville Track to Mungerannie, our stop for the night.
Mungerannie is an entertaining place to say the least. The people who operate this joint have got a great sense of humour. Keep in mind this campground is in the middle of nowhere – literally the middle of nowhere – there’s a pub where the staff seems to be encouraged to give the customers a (good-natured) hard time, a McDonald’s “coming soon” sign (no, there is definitely not a McDonald’s coming to Mungerannie or anywhere nearby anytime soon), and a bus stop for the Adelaide metro system (also definitely not coming anywhere near Mungerannie anytime soon).
The pub was a classic Outback pub with quirky decorations – Stetson hats and bras and past customers’ ponytails attached to the ceiling – along with a pretty cool photo wall documenting some of the pub’s history, and a big map of Australia where we spent some time thinking about the route for the rest of our trip!
At Mungerannie there also used to be a natural Artesian hot spring, but it’s currently dried up. The convoy had arrived early-ish, hoping to partake, but instead we had a welcome extended happy hour before an early start the next morning for the 400km on dirt/sand roads to Poeppel Corner (intersection of 3 states) and a night bush camping in the Simpson desert!
Sidenote, we learned a lesson on the early pack-down the next morning, that we should actively plan never to pack down the tent in freezing temperatures: the tent cover, which is a sort of rubberised canvas, actually freezes in whatever shape we left it in, and it’s extremely difficult to mold it to fit the shape of the packed-down tent enough to zip it shut.
MVP of this leg: bacon & egg rolls from the Mungerannie pub the morning we rolled out – being able to pack most of our camp gear the night before made the 7am freezing cold tent pack much more streamlined, and allowed us the extra time to wrestle with the tent cover without holding up the convoy. Plus, they were delicious!
So, Where Exactly Is This?
Here’s a screenshot of this leg of the journey from WikiCamps! The red is what we’ve already covered, and the green is what was featured in the post you just read. You can also follow us live at this link – our satellite device pings our shared map frequently.
