Thursday, 6 August 2026
I forgot to mention that, when we opened our swag bag last night, we had brought a couple of hitchhikers with us in the shape of two big, fat, hairy caterpillars. I managed to coax them onto a stick and I deposited them into a nearby tree hoping that they will survive after being relocated nearly 200 kilometres from Mount Dare. We are not quite sure how they managed to get into our swag bag as it was zipped up overnight. And we didn’t noticed them on the swag as we rolled it up this morning.
Our other wildlife encounter last night was with an insect that was in the swag with us after Bernie had made his way in. No way of knowing whether it crawled in some time during the evening before I went to bed, and I just didn’t notice it, or it came in with Bernie?? Anyway, while we were trying to evict it, it gave Bernie a painful bite on the finger. Ah, the great Aussie outdoors!
Rolling out of our campsite at 9.00am we’d had plenty of time to: freshen up with wet wipes, dress, roll the swag, pack up the PortaPotti, eat breakfast, get the swag on the roof rack, get the PortaPotti on the roof rack, put a Jerry can of fuel into the tank and attach the sand flag. There is so much gear to organise to get back on the road each morning.
We continued our journey along the Madigan Line, passing through a forest of dead trees around 10.00am. Comments soon started being made over the radio about all the potential firewood. I thought I heard that there were not going to be any more bonfires … but then we were stopping to collect firewood. While we were collecting I could hear budgies around us. I hope we didn’t remove too much of their habitat?? At least today we did only take fallen wood and no standing dead trees were felled for a campfire tonight.
While there were plenty of low shrubs, I took the opportunity to use the bush toilet, as I thought that the scrub was about to run out when we entered the dunes. I couldn’t have been more wrong! We have started to navigate the desert dunes, but they are LUSH with vegetation! Everyone has been surprised to see the desert so verdant. Of course our trip was originally scheduled for April and it was cancelled because of the amount to rain that flowed into the Simpson Desert during 2026’s BIG wet season. Big wet = green desert.
There were several types of acacia and other yellow flowering shrubs that were definitely not acacias. Despite Googling to try to identify the other yellow plants, I could not decide what they are. I think there was a hakea? It’s seed pods looked like hakea seed pods. There were two types of grevillea, but I only managed to photograph the beautiful sand hill grevilleas (Grevillea stenobotrya) with their distinctive clusters of golden yellow flowers.
We passed by Madigan Camps 2, 3 and 4 as these camps are inaccessible to the public, because they are of significance to the traditional owners. We reached the turnoff for the Colson Track, which is named for Ted Colson, the first European to cross the Simpson Desert in 1936. It was constructed during the 1960s to give access from Alice Springs to the area around the NT/SA border and the oil lease there.
Soon after, we pulled into Madigan Camp 5 for our lunch break. We ate quickly then let air out of the tyres, letting them down to 22psi for the sand driving which will start to become more challenging from here. With others still enjoying their hot beverages, we had time to walk back down the track to take photos of the purple daisies. Brachyscome, I believe? The desert it so colourful, but I fear its vibrancy simply cannot be captured in our photographs.
As we continued driving, someone queried what type of vehicle made the first vehicular crossing of the Simpson Desert. John told us it was a Nissan. Some additional Googling by a couple of passengers – because you can when you have Starlink! – confirmed that the first motorized vehicular crossing of the Simpson Desert was completed on the 11th of September 1962, by the Sprigg Family. Geologist Reg Sprigg, his wife Griselda, and their children Doug and Marg drove a G60 Nissan Patrol from Andado Station in the Northern Territory to Birdsville Queensland.
The afternoon passed with our convoy of cars driving up and down … and up … and down the (relatively) small dunes of the western Simpson Desert. Until we reached the Colson Track, two-way traffic was allowed between Camps 1 – 5. The section of the Madigan Line between the Colson Track and Hay River Track (Camps 5 – 15) must be travelled from west to east. This meant that we could now be confident that we would not encounter any oncoming traffic for a couple of days … or so.
We parked up at Madigan Camp 6, mainly to give everyone an opportunity for a comfort stop, before continuing to tonight’s camp at a location somewhere between Camps 6 and 7. It was only mid afternoon when we stopped today, so we were able to set up our camps in the daylight and (I think) most of us managed to cook our meals and eat them before the sun set. Mal was searching out wildlife again and led me to today’s discovery, a pink galah perched atop a hollow in a tree. Mal had actually seen the galah IN the hollow, so we suspect it may have been using the hollow for nesting.
The campfire was only small this evening as there is too much vegetation around the campsite to risk a larger fire. With the fire only half the size of last night’s, it wasn’t nearly as warm to sit around it. Just as mesmerizing to watch it though! Without the warmth of the fire, everyone was earlier to retire tonight with most in their beds before 9.00pm.
Marshall Bluff to a campsite between Madigan Camps 6 and 7 – 98 kilometres
