21. – 23. May

Now it was time to start the Birdsville Track which connects Maree with Birdsville and was used as a drover route covering around 500km. It’s a dirt road and you and your car collects a lot of it. - The first night we’ve spend in Clifton a camp area with a bath tub. While pitching the tent the tub got filled with nice warm artesian water. So we could jump into the bath after the work was done. The best part was it had pressure jets so you could get a neck or lower back massage (depending where you were sitting).

There is another accessible bore bath along the track but that was not so nice. We had just a quick look, were amazed by the cockatoos in the trees and drove on. The last 40km were a bit challenging as you had to cross some water… if they couldn’t create a detour. One crossing was long and around 50cm deep but luckily we didn’t have any problem. Later we learnt that another Grand Vitara had to be towed through this crossing. - It didn’t have a snorkel to breath underwater! ;-) The air intake is at the front section of the engine room and positioned very low. So, ‘breathing’ water was pretty possible for a car without a snorkel or very high ground clearance. 

In Birdsville we drove in direction Big Red – but could just go until little red and then the road was closed. The lake had flooded the whole road and it must be deep. We could see one National Park Sign and it was standing half in water – no possibility to enter the Simpson Desert from Birdsville. We looked at the Waadi trees – an ancient tree which only grows in three areas. It looks like a pine tree and the wood is so hard you will even have problems with a chainsaw. They assume that the trees are around 500+ years old.

Cheers, Tom and Anja