Day 14, Wednesday 4/07/2012, Purni Bore to the Lone Gum

Although we all managed to keep warm enough in our beds, last night was pretty chilly. It is -2°C now at 7am. Peter is unable to get water out of the T Van as his pipes are frozen and there is a cup with water frozen solid.

The bolt holding Peter’s Foxwing awning onto the car has rattled loose. Lucky he noticed and could tighten it before leaving. All of Haley’s socks are either wet or muddy so she’s sitting in the car with gloves on her feet, making her look like a monkey. Hilarious!

It was such a wonderfully exciting day 4WDing across the Simpson today, heading east on the French line for a bit on baby dunes, then chucking a right to head south down the Rig Line. It is quite fast along here as it is a clay track following a swale. The Pockrans had fun chasing a camel along here and Jordan and Jack had a go driving. I then had a turn driving where the Rig Line swings back to the east, once again climbing dunes. This is our first taste of some larger dunes. We were treated to a dingo sighting again and saw a wedge tailed eagle take off with a rabbit in it’s claws.

The desert is so green. Greener than last time we were here. There were more flowers in 2010. Looking closer you can see that the majority of bushes have flower buds. We must be a few weeks too early. It will be amazing when they all bloom. It is so much more fun when you’re doing the driving. Don’t come out here and not have a go, it’s what it’s all about! For lunch we pulled over in a swale that had a big washaway and trees which made for some fun running around exploring.

 

The Rig Line now becomes the WAA Line which is where the real fun begins. No more packed clay track. We’re into the real orange, sand dune driving now with dunes from 5 to 20m. There are plenty of washaways and the track often zigzags up and down the dunes. Finally Fiona had a turn driving and you couldn’t wipe the grin off her face. Lisa and Stuart have been sharing 50/50, but Anthea still hasn’t had a go. I’ll have to keep encouraging her as it would make it so much more exciting.

Halfway along the WAA Line Lisa and Stuart noticed a clunking noise as they turn left. The rear stabilizing arm had come loose as the bush had shredded and disintegrated. The boys managed to fix it by cutting up some spare rubber matting into squares. They layered 4 of them and cut a hole through the centre using a pocket knife. They cut a 5^th one to use elsewhere as a washer. Great job boys, we were soon back on track. To fill in the time and stretch their legs, most of the women and kids set out ahead walking along the track while the repair work was done.

 

Not far along Peter pulled up as his car was making a loud tappety sound which was quickly fixed by topping up his oil. He has done amazingly well, getting over everything. You wouldn’t know he was towing a trailer.

Jordan, Jessica and Madison had a turn driving once we were heading south in the swale on the Erabena Track. It was Jessica and Madison’s first drive, how exciting for it to be in the Simpson Desert!

We arrived at The Lone Gum at 5.15pm to find it deserted. We have the whole place to ourselves in the middle of the Simpson Desert. Everyone set up a basic campsite pretty quickly. Dinners were all cooked at the same time while the kids got the fire going. It was lovely to all eat together around the fire.

Col and I lost our coffee today. The lid had come off and coffee was everywhere. Col did a great job of emptying and sweeping out the cupboard. He also took a quick look at the water tank as we have been losing water into our food storage (lucky they all have waterproof packaging). He thinks it is a leaking pipe connection. Time for the magic tape. Lisa and Stuart seem to have run out of gas. Maybe the tap was bounced on? It looks like they’ll be cooking on the fire more often, although they already were doing that a bit. I’ll share my gas burner if they’ll donate some coffee! Our radio charger doesn’t work either and we have to keep swapping radios with Bruce. It’s not fun when it goes flat and you can’t hear the conversations. The internal lights in the T Van have shaken loose and the wire snapped on one of them. Bruce lost a D shackle from his tow hitch. I guess we were all a bit “shaken” today.

There are a huge number of little marsupials running around us tonight. They are slightly larger than a rat and rounder, fluffier and cuter. After getting photos of the giant orange moon, the kids stole our cameras and were running around getting amazing photos of the little marsupial moles. They’re such great photos, I’m sure Australian Geographic would want them!

Casper had no trouble at all today over the large sand dunes even though it is only a “People Mover” (not)! It got to a balmy 21°C today after our frozen start this morning. Everyone is around the fire reminiscing about the day’s exciting driving adventures the cool bush fix and how clever our kids were at driving. Col set up the thunderbox with a sunrise view of the Lone Gum. He’ll have to be up early tomorrow!