3 Corners & a Double Simpson Desert Crossing - Day 10 to Day 12

Day 10 to Day 12 - 1/4/2016 to 3/4/2016 - Birdsville to Home

After a good nights sleep it was an early start to start making the long push back home.  Because I still wasn’t eating anything, I skipped the Birdsville bakery for breakfast and headed off before the others.

The Birdsville Pub

When we hit the black top just before Windorah, the guys took off ahead of me as while I was inflating my tyres to highway pressures I was having to scratch out some of the hardened mud on the inside of my tyres.  The mud stuck on the rims was causing a vibration because the wheel was unbalanced.  After it was all scratched out it was back to a smooth ride on the blacktop.

I briefly caught up with Snowy at Windorah.  I pulled in as he was pulling out.

Windorah main street

After a few more hours on the road I arrived at Quilpie and happened to pull into the same servo that Snowy was at.  Selwyn had already headed off to Charleville and Snowy was waiting for some food so that they could eat on the run while they headed to Cunnamulla.

After saying a final goodbye to Snowy and the boys I headed off to find a chemist for a few extra supplies and then checked into the an onsite cabin at the van park.

When leaving the van park the following morning the centre diff lock light on the Pajero dashboard started flashing, which was unusual.  After a few “turn it off and turn it back on again” moments it still didn’t turn off.  The vehicle seemed to drive as normal though.  So just out of interest I found another wash down bay and give the underbody another good hose off especially around the transfer case.  And another heap of mud was dislodged and came out.  On restarting the vehicle the light was gone so I can only suspect that the dried out mud was causing an issue somewhere.

As I was starting to feel a bit better I decided to put in a really long day on the road.  I was aiming to make it to the Bunya Mountains as my parents happened to be staying there at that time.  There was nothing like a bit of Mums home remedies to help fix up a dodgy stomach!  So unfortunately no photos as I was only really focused on driving for the day.

The previous long day also then made for a relatively short day to make it to home.  I was lucky enough that I had built a few days of contingency into the trip so I had a couple of days to unpack, clean up and get better before having to go back to work.

It didn’t feel like it at the time, but all in all it was a great trip despite the fact of getting sick on it.

Here are some of the trip stats.

4 States (QLD, NSW, SA and NT)

3 State Corners

5,246km in 12 days

711.45 Litres of diesel

13.56 L/100km

For the Desert section of Birdsville to Birdsville

797km

156.57 Litres

19.64 L/100km

I finally got this trip report finished, just in time for the next one to start in about a weeks time!