After so many days of back-to-back travel, it was time for a rest in Birdsville, a town of approximately 115 people on the eastern edge of the Simpson Desert, just north of the Queensland-South Australia border. We had planned to stay for two nights, but extended to a third night when we heard from the crew of heroes who stayed behind with our trip leader to await the desert recovery, that they were on their way just one day behind schedule. Birdsville is a town with a bit of everything – history, adventure, unique flora, a bit of culture in the form of a huge music festival we’d only just…

Time now for our convoy to take on the mighty Simpson Desert, containing the world’s longest parallel sand dunes, and to tackle the mighty Big Red as the culminating “boss fight” of the desert, a massive 40 metre high sand dune at the eastern edge. Crossing the Simpson is a very serious undertaking. You must have experience with four wheel driving, or hire a guide who has. You should travel with others for safety’s sake, and ideally never split up into groups of less than 3 vehicles. There is no fuel, food, or water for hundreds of kilometres so you must also bring your own supplies, enough for your planned…

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…

After a nice hot breakfast at Copley (and a quandong pie for the road!), we were in for another big day of outback sightseeing and a lovely evening watching the sun set over Lake Eyre at Level Post Bay. The first stop was Farina, just 57km north from Copley. Nick and I felt rather nostalgic about Farina as we’d camped there last year around Anzac Day (Similar to Remembrance Day but dedicated to the Australia and New Zealand Armed Corps, for our North American friends and family). On that trip we rolled into camp after a couple weeks of rain and were relieved to see sunny skies overhead. Ironically, overnight…

Psst, have you seen our InReach map yet? If you’re ever curious to see where we are right now, our satellite communicator (InReach, by Garmin) auto-pings a map every 10 minutes when we’re on the move! Check it out at http://share.garmin.com/nickandpam (and you’ll notice we’re a liiiiitle behind in blog posts at the moment). After a day of running errands in nearby Hawker, we returned to Wilpena Pound to meet up with the Sydney Jeep Club for the Simpson Desert crossing portion of our trip! It’s much safer to attempt crossing remote areas with a convoy of, I would say, at least 4 vehicles, preferably 6 to 7, and we…

From Willow Springs it was on to Ikara, or Wilpena Pound. We had been seeing Wilpena Pound from several lookouts/vantage points throughout our stays in Bendleby Ranges and Willow Springs, including Stokes Lookout with a scale model of Wilpena Pound right in front of the real thing (helpfully labelled, too!). We had visited Wilpena Pound in April 2017 as part of our two-month mini lap, and we were excited to return. On our previous visit, it rained, and rained, and rained – and when it wasn’t raining the cloud cover was so low that we weren’t able to see much of the impressive scenery of the Pound and the surrounding…

After Bendleby Ranges we set north to hit another recommendation from our friends at Dobinson’s Adelaide, namely the Skytrek drive at Willow Springs station. While Bendleby Ranges had a huge selection of 4wd tracks, Willow Springs offers one track with extensive points of interest and documentation about the history, geology, and plant life along the way. Once again, we were in a remote campsite, closer to the shower block this time (at Bendleby Ranges we were a 10 minute drive away; at Willow Springs a 10 minute walk) but still with our own drop toilet on site, fire pit, and near-complete isolation. Willow Springs has been an operating cattle and…

While on our two-month mini-lap last year, we had to stop at Dobinson’s Adelaide to get some new, heavy duty springs fitted to the Jeep, as we were weighed down with so much gear that the rear axles were hitting the chassis when we went over any bumps (for the non-technical… it’s really uncomfortable… we’ve corrected the issue this time around though with a fully upgraded suspension). While the first springs were being installed in Adelaide, we of course had a chat with the shop employees about where we’d been and where we were going. They had some amazing recommendations that we weren’t able to get to at the time,…

One of the most amazing and frustrating things about exploring and travelling is that you can never see everything. We experienced this phenomenon frequently on our two-month “mini lap”, and started keeping a list of “next time” places, along with prioritising our time in accordance with the likelihood that we would visit that place again. So for example, while we would have liked to see more of Adelaide last time, we can easily fly there, so didn’t spend much time around the city and surrounds. It’s a little funny that, 10 days into a year-long trip, we already have a running “next time” list. Broken Hill and surrounds are near…

After two nights in Wilcannia, we were ready to keep pushing on. While it’s not super necessary to make campground bookings in the winter in outback Australia, school holidays are approaching, and so we had booked a few days each at three popular campgrounds in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia and needed to keep to some semblance of a schedule. I use an app called WikiCamps to find campsites (thanks Holly for the recommendation!). It cost $7, and it’s a fantastic resource. It’s popular in Australia and contains user-submitted ratings, comments, prices, photos, and lists of amenities for every campground in Australia (amenities can be from as obvious as…