Madi’s Manoeuvres.Simpson Desert claypan camp to Sandune camp. Day 17 – 17 June 2024.

Up and around camp shots this morning. Lots of critters making perfect circles and shapes in the sand. Colours in the grass and plants. AND we are rolling in record time 8:50 with MaryJ in the passenger seat with me.

A busy day for me with MJ in the morning and Ann on board for the arvo.
We headed off this morning back across the clay pan and up the sandune to do the loop to Poeppel corner which is the point where the borders of Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland meet. The obligatory photos were taken.

Last night while sitting around camp, The Birdsville Pub’s Recovery Vehicle (a large truck) trundled past camp lights ablaze, off to a recovery. This morning as we were getting ready to leave Poeppel Corner we saw it carrying a broken in half Ute and towing a camper trailer. We raced to get away before he crossed the claypan heading for Birdsville.

Mary and I saw a bird hovering and fluttering above us, it came to land in a tree nearby the track and Mary M got a great shot with her long lens – we identified it as a Brown Songlark.

Today there is a lot of traffic on the QAA line which meant we had to pull off for them to move past. There are call markers along the track, at which drivers are supposed to make a call to alert other groups where you are on Channel 10. Stef did a fabulous job in with Brian and called our group of 6 heading East on the QAA line, attack marker, however many of the oncoming groups failed to make the same calling protocol.

The dunes today were pretty easy, with several different options over the top, we tended to pick out our own path. A few of the group ‘saw parrots’ which required a reverse down the dune and a re do. (seeing parrots is a euphemism for not making it over a dune and needing to reverse and do it again. A hangover from our trip on Googs Track a few years back, where Col claimed to have seen a rare parrot and stopped to look, trying to cover his failure to cross a dune. )

Between the dunes in the swales there were often patches with water on them and they were oh so very green. Remnants of the rainfall earlier in the month.

Whenever we stopped there were flowers and shrubs etc to capture attention.

We pulled after 4pm on a sandy patch between the dunes.

Mary M and Steve both put the drone up, so will be interesting to see that footage.