Madi’s Manoeuvres.Camp #12 and a bit on the Madigan Line to Hay River Track camp. Day 11 – 11 June 2024.

Up early before 6am as we want to leave by 8:30 to get in front of the group who keep getting to our designated campsites before us. We hit the track with me in the lead.

The track has dingo prints and Kate actually saw a Dingo on the track behind me. I saw four large birds takeoff takeoff and not sure if they were Brolgas or maybe Bustards.

In and out of Camp 13, as the group behind started to pull in. I moved from front end to Tail End Charlie.

Really enjoying the shadows of the foliage as you drive through. The spinifex is flowering with a wheat like head of seeds and they just look fabulous against the red sand.

Rolled into camp 14 with an impatient TVan driver on my tail. Thankfully he could get past us here along with the more friendly members of his group. This is the group we have been in sync with all trip and evidently the TVan man usually stays at a separate camp from the rest of the group and is always out in front. Last night they came together as they were having a roast. Strange way to Travel! Not sure how things would be bouncing around in the Tvan.

From this camp we had a further five kms to travel to complete the Madigan Line as best we can, as the last section is inacessable due to the flooding.

About 12:30 we stopped at the junction of Madigan Line and Hay River Track. There were some old gums at the corner that had budgies which we were keen to photograph. In the excitement of the budgies I forgot to photograph the post and we forgot to do a selfie at the end of the Madigan Line. But we did get the budgies and also saw a very small egg in a hollow tree which I think they think is a teal egg.

The Hay River track seems to be winding its way between dunes rather than across them.

Stopped for lunch a little way up the Hay River track just before 1pm.

Cruising along between the dunes being serenaded by budgerigars through quite different landscape of gnarly trees and smooth sand.

Across the desert we all aired our tyres down and we’re all somewhere in the high 20s PSI in the front and 20 to 30 in the back. There are some rocky patches on this section and will review whether or not we get the compressors out as time goes on.

Saw couple of birds of prey which were well lit for photos. Nankeen Kestrels according to Col.

We saw our first oncoming traffic for the first time in four days, before Mt Dare, in fact the last oncoming traffic was coming into Dalhousie Springs as we were leaving. The Madigan Line is a one-way track.

The decision was made that we would pull up early today and after lunch, Col was tasked with finding a place to camp around 3:30.

He did well.

It’s been a while since our last showers- the shower at Mt Dare was pretty crook and hardly counted – my last decent shower was Marree, plus the swim at Dalhousie. Since then it’s been nappy wipes to the rescue.
Mary Jackson had mentioned having a tub tonight and this sounded pretty good. So armed with a small saucepan (probably 700ml) of warm/hot water I managed to wash and condition my hair and have an all over scrub and rinse and felt oh soo much the better for it.
Had time to tidy up the car which had grown unruly with stuff not fully organised. I also downloaded some of the camera shots of birds from today and get a blog up while doing drinks and nibbles.

Mary Morgan has made a magnificent minestrone at home and frozen it, she also made a delicious gluten free Parmesan damper, which was perfectly crunchy and cheesy to accompany the soup for dinner.

Then dishes, followed by drying the tea towels beside the fire which seemed to take forever.

Then time to pack things away, visit the toilet, get into my pjs in the pop up dressing tent and hit the swag. Lights out and blog notes written by midnight.