Firstly for those who don’t know me a little bit of history. In 2008 I rode from Singapore to England with a good friend Mike Green. We had met a year previously at the Horizons Unlimited meeting in Tintaldra in the Victorian high country. For those who are interested you can read about that trip on Mike’s blog at mikegreen1200.blogspot.com. That trip lasted five months, and was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime, unfortunately it didn’t scratch the itch, so more planning for me started then. I asked where I worked to have six months off without pay, but not surprisingly in these economic times they said no, so I have now finished work, sold the house and started the new life of adventure traveller.
The Birdsville Track
In preparation for the next big trip I teamed up with Mike again to have a little side bar adventure, and ride the Birdsville Track. The unsealed road in Australia’s outback runs from Maree in South Australia through New South Wales and just across the State Line into Queensland. The first explorer to enter this region was Edward Eyre in 1840 who travelled as Lake Eyre. It wasn't until a search party went searching for Burke and Wills, who had in fact died at Cooper Creek, in the early 1860's that the region first started opening up. In 1880 Burt travelled the route that is now known as the Birdsville Track. It was around this time that cattlemen used the track to move their stock from Queensland to Adelaide in the anticipation of getting higher prices for the cattle. The Afghan Traders used the route as well to plough their trade between the remote settlements in the area. In the 1930's vehicles started using the Birdsville Track and one of the more famous travellers at the time was Tom Kruse, the legendary postman who worked for Harry Ding.
The Track these days, is a destination for a lot of the four-wheel drive vehicles and is considered a rather easy off road excursion. Having said that without the right preparation and forethought you can still get yourself into a lot of trouble, due to the distance between any sort of habitation and the scorching temperatures in the summer months between November and April. Qld had had a lot of rain in January of this year and the water had been slowly making its way south until it had once again filled Lake Ayre (normally a dry salt lake) and flooded the track at Coopers Creek. Another good reason to go now to see it.
Day 1&2, Melbourne To Adelaide
I left Melbourne on Monday 14th of June to ride to Adelaide where Mike lives, suffice to say that unless you take the route that runs around the Great Ocean Road then it’ s pretty uninteresting 760km and bloody cold too. I broke the journey in Bordertown, which has a nice Victorian pub and went via the Wellington Ferry so I could ride into the South of Adelaide through the vineyards of McClaren Vale.
Day three, Adelaide to Port Augusta.
Mike and I left his house and headed north for our first stop (my third) in Port Augusta, again another pretty uninspiring town at the top of the Spencer Gulf, which is the crossroads for anyone heading North/South or West across the Nullarbor, and the Railroad that runs North.
Day four Port Augusta to Marree.
We left Port Augusta and we took the more scenic route through Quorn and Hawker and through the Claire valley wineries this time. I now know where the Taylor’s winery is, and it was a pity we didn’t have more time to stop at the cellar door and stock up!! Another nice piece of road through here is the Pichi Richi Pass which, Mike assures me regularly gets altered with some white paint to become the “ichi ichi ass” That kept me amused for a few Km. We also past around the SW side of the Flinders Ranges which looked spectacular and is definitely on the list for another time.
The Flinders Ranges
The end of the day saw our first piece of dirt road that start’s at Leigh Creek and runs the last 50km though to Marree. Total mileage for me so far was 1450km and we had only just reached the start of our adventure!!!
The Railroad reached Marree back in 1883 and it became a major railhead for the cattle being brought down the Track from QLD and also the route for the Ghan Train up to Alice Springs until 1980 when the railway was rebuilt further west.
Today it looks like it struggles to survive on the tourists that are either travelling down the Oodnadatta Track, or starting up the Birdsville Track. There are remnants of the Railway and the makeshift Mosque the Afghan camel drivers built for themselves.
The end of an era for the train
The Marree Pub
The Afghan Camel driver Mosque
Day Five. Marree to Lake Ayre and Back.
We wanted to see Lake Ayre with water in it, seeing that this is another once in ten years occurrence. So after refuelling we set out on the road through Muloorina Station to Level Post Bay on the eastern side of lake.
After about 30km we came across the Dog Fence. The Dingo Fence or Dog Fence is a pest exclusion fence that was built in Australia during the 1880s and finished in 1885, to keep dingoes out of the relatively fertile southeast part of the continent (where they had largely been exterminated) and protect the sheep flocks of southern Queensland. It is one of the longest structures in the world and is the world's longest fence. It stretches 5,614 km (3,488 mi) from Jimbour on the Darling Downs near Dalby, through thousands of kilometres of arid land ending west of Eyre peninsular on cliffs of the Nullarbor Plain.
The road was pretty good until we reached the campsite at Muloorina Station, after which it started to deteriorate badly, the corrugations got steadily worse until holding onto the handlebars was starting to hurt! It was at this point that I think my registration label disappeared, along with one of my indicator lenses. Fifteen km from the end of the road we came across a hill, which was covered in sand. Mike speared off to the left going up, and it was only seeing this that prevented me from doing the same. We stopped at the top and decided that discretion was the better part of valour, besides, we could see the water in the lake from here, and we had no idea if this was a taste of things to come. As it turned out it was the worst part and things got better from that point on. The consolation to this was that there was nothing more to see once you reached the end of the road. We turned around and rode the 100km back to a cold beer or three at the pub.
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