The Hay River Track, Simpson Desert

four drivers come out of the Simpson Desert in their droves every year and I mean for good reason it's one of the best places to do desert driving in Australia most take the French line from Birdsville or all the way to mount dare east to west or vice versa but there's another option and it's called the Hay River track and it starts just here your pop will corner it runs all the way up to the north at the plenty highway roughly 350 k's east of Alice Springs now here it's really good and it's a great alternative crossing to the simpson desert with maybe less crowds so I'm keen to go check it out let's go have a look [Music] let's backtrack a second though last time we left you we're just mattered in the birdsville after our Outback pub crawl from issue 24 after enjoying the big red bash we pushed on to our next adventure the hay river track but the adventure started before we even left town always said it um pays to keep a close eye on your car and I've think I've dodged a pretty major bullet here this morning just pulled up at the Roadhouse here to fuel up and I thought I'd pop the bonnet just to see how the old motors going and I've actually got a really bad leak on this at the moment that's I've got oil heating out of the front of the engine and there's not much on the dipstick either at all so if I sort of kept on driving I probably would have seized this motor it is running all right I've ducked into the shop got myself some fresh oil and some degreaser there I should be able to do a little repair and get it sealed up again fingers crossed hopefully it'll be all right complete disclosure here the repair I tried didn't work the sealant was the wrong type and it didn't have enough time to really set so I thought I'd drop the defender off to someone who actually knows what they're doing barnsey at the birdsville Roadhouse he had it repaired quickly with the right gear and the right knowledge and all I had to do was wait overnight after the work was done we had a quick interview with Peter Barnes to find out a bit more about the birdsville mechanic now I'm barnsey Peter Barnes I live in birdsville and we do the repairs tires and there's it recoveries and whatever you and run the bed full radius I've been here for 20 years in a couple of stints I had come in an 84 1984 I made a 10-year break out of the place between 96 and whenever 2004 I'm from Millicent near Mount Gambier I was looking for a job and I made up my mind said you'll get a job tomorrow as a cattle station mechanic at Cameron down of the Dury so I said I'll ring the manager tomorrow so we're not being about 1982 and I loved it and then the bloke around Cameron Downs owned this place and I said you ever thought of getting a workshop gun in beds and and I went home for 18 months and come back and I went back to the same cattle station for seven months and that job comfortable clothes and and he said this bloke said to the owner said what about the workshop idea and Birds velocity nothing else today so this guy so we started and I'll shed in the back straight in Birds when first mechanic ever to set up a workshop in birds I think I like the remoteness there's a certain beauty I think there's a certain beauty day wherever you live except that well years ago we had all those recoveries like type thing not in the desert there wasn't much traffic in the desert years ago but we do the road stuff with car prowlers no no when I come back here I'm not doing car phallus so we've got tilt raised near and including that one with it runs in the desert so we don't use it much but on those jobs we need that vehicle will I've got one so it's handy yeah I gets around a few times a year I try not to use it but when you gotta go you got to go it's an email in cat ka to its next German army bullet carrier I bought it in Australia in 1995 which had been imported we converted it to write in drive ourselves now I left Karen birds flew in 1996 in it with a mobile home on the back and when we came back to Birdsville I said throw the mobile home away and put a tilt tray on it but I thought it can make some money in the air fork for me instead of cost me yeah make sure your vehicles properly up stretch before you leave home well don't overload it for a start driver recording leads over here I mean drive to the conditions but it's hard I mean people have been told that a few times and if you do that you should you should be okay you know I used to say people bought everything except the kitchen sink and now say they bring it including the kitchen sink well when you get to bench a seasoned cream cans in the desert it's not always overloading it's more yeah I don't know what causes some that honestly we get such a huge array of problems so it's everything he was gonna do is hit the wrong bump at the wrong speed at the wrong time and it's done the damage in you you know and that could happen to anybody but so you just know I might give him the guy for another couple of years I shouldn't say that on TV because I'm trying to sell and Twitter and they ever think of a nice day for another companies and I got me sunny arrows set up in a world and show me out the road he's got a big shared with everything it opens and shuts to manufacture things so I can't run away and leave you but he's mom what Birdsville dates back to around 1881 when it was originally known as Diamantina crossing at its height it had three pubs one of which is still behind the ear the remnants of anyway had a cordial factory customs house and a population of around 300 these days it's a bit quieter though there's one pub down the road here no cordial factory and a population of around with the salient now cured overnight making it probably the least leaky thing under the bonnet we fired the defender up nice and early in the morning to catch up with the others rather than wait in town with us the guys that decided to head into the desert for a short way so they can enjoy an extra night of desert camping we made good progress in the morning the Sun rising over the dunes behind us and lighting up the soft reds and greens of the desert the hay river track runs south to north from poeple corner up to the plenty highway at baton Hill camp before you get there however you need to head westwards about a hundred and sixty old kilometers along the qat a line from Birdsville past Eyre Creek and into the Simpson Desert National Park so don't forget your permits for this run you'll also need to organize permits for the Hay River tracts section as well these can be gained from Joel Fleming who runs direct for drive in Alice Springs depending on the season your progress along the qaa line can be slowed up by the conditions of the track lots of traffic and vehicles who tend to bash their way up the side of a dune can leave it very rough and sculpt out slowing your progress a lot and making it a bit harder to get up edge soon our best tip is air pressures let them down a good amount and this means a bit less than 20 psi for most applications but it does depend on the size of your tires and the weight of your vehicle if you aren't sure experiment around a bit if you forward drive is bogging down it's probably just trying to tell you the tire pressures are still too when you get to like poeple the hey river track starts you noticed with a right hand turn towards the north you won't miss this lake it's pretty incredible if it's wet crossing it can be quite a tricky and dangerous affair ensure you've got low pressures and have a friend to drag you out luckily for us it was pretty dry poeple corner is a fairly fast 20 kilometer run along the lakes edge southwards and would be a very worthwhile diversion if you have the time [Music] [Music] [Music] the drive northward Punk's you right in the middle of a big smooth Swale the dunes rise and fall on your left and right but your progress is markedly good to start with if you've done an east-west run before this way does give you a really different perspective of the desert but you don't drive south to north the whole time after about 50 caves you make a fairly sudden right-hand turn at Beachcomber oil well once again this time from west to east your attacking the dunes head-on what I really like about this hey river runs so far is the variety that you get the first leg you do there is about a 50k run northwards up through a pretty big and vegetated swell and it's really quite different for the desert then you turned right at an old oil well and you start doing this run here which takes you up and over a lot of big red rich sand dunes and it's really interesting and beautiful run then we're turning left once again going north so we'll see what happens there [Music] [Music] [Music] and after a big day of driving we made camp along the track does it camping like this is some of the best you can have out here there's a fire crackling away and dinner in the camp oven there really isn't another place you'd rather be the next morning we were up early keen to crack on and enjoy the drive we had to get a gauge of exactly how many caves we've covered the night before see how progress is going so out with the map points and fingers and see how things are traveling it's always a tough thing to predict I'd have to recommend trying to include an extra day or two in your own itinerary instead of trying to be as accurate as possible track conditions might slow you down more than you think out here so it's best to have a little bit of extra time up your sleeve [Music] not long after breaking camp we made it to the intersection of Madigan's camp 16 and 15 bringing back some fond memories of last year's run across the Madigan Line there's a blaze tree here at camp 16 the blaze is pretty hard to spot these days the tree is mostly grown over it but there's still a nice spot to have a look read the plaque and appreciate the kind of history out here we sign the book stretch our legs gather some firewood and we'll back on our way after the intersection with the Madigan Line the Hay River track starts to really winders way through a very vegetated swale sometimes you'd almost call it lush I've been in the desert a few times now and I have to say this track has showed us some of the Redis sand I have seen the track twists and curves through some incredibly stunning desert making this hey River run so different from other simpson desert tracks being able to access this country which was only recently opened up to tourists through the hard work of joel fleming and traditional owner lindsey boogie is a real privilege we drove into the night making up lost time and pushing onto Lake Caroline it's situated about 10 KS off the main track towards the west and if I had only one piece of advice for you it would be to visit this spot we were running late and pulled up under the cover of darkness and when we awoke in the morning we were greeted with an amazing sunrise and incredible view over this dry lakebed [Music] pulled into Lake Caroline last night pretty late and set up camp in the dark and we didn't really know what we're in for in terms of what the lake looked like but let me tell you in the morning it was a incredible experience I mean this big flat barren expanse of baked earth is really actually quite surreal we've just spent a couple of hours here this afternoon kicking the football looking around and sort of appreciating what this kind of place is I mean have a look at it [Music] after enjoying the food like lakebed for a few hours we had to back out onto the main track [Music] [Music] [Music] you have to be careful here crossing the bed of the Hay River it's actually quite soft through here and can quickly catch you out especially if your tire pressures are still a little bit too I along the track is a spot called dingo well it's a solar-powered water pump that brings up a constant source of water here for the local wildlife the whole idea behind dingo well is that the water is giving the diminishing dingo population a bit of a chance to bounce back before all the Europeans turned up Indigenous Australians maintained a series of wells and water so throughout this country which also helps sustain water dependent dingo populations since those wells and soaks have started disappearing so did the dingoes being the apex predator in this country dingoes have a very important role in maintaining biological diversity they reduce the number of invasive feral animals like cats and peeps which is beneficial to native animal populations seeing how much life was supported out of this sport and the fact that we saw a dingo having a bit of a nap on the side of the track I think is a decent rule of thumb that this plan is working well [Music] from Lake Caroline you're running over a hundred kilometres through to Baton Hill camp you go past the Tropic of Capricorn on a track that straightens out quite a bit since the previous day [Music] [Music] [Music] we were a little bit worried that we wouldn't make it through to Baton Hill before sundown but we took a relatively easy day and got in a couple of hours before dusk because the track so straight and fairly well-maintained here you can keep a pretty decent clip throughout most of it it allowed us to set up camp kick over the fire and relax it [Music] which all got a bit of camp up and pizza going that night which is absolutely delicious it uses yogurt and flour for a very simple and tasty base which doesn't take long to put together all you do is mix up a half kilo tub of yogurt with an equal amount of plain flour mix it and knead it together for a few minutes roll these out into separate bases and they're done no need for rising or resting with these the bases are good to go straight away we put them straight into a preheated camp oven and started adding our toppings firstly bit of tomato paste then we throw in some pepperoni red onions and a nice liberal coating of cheese then put it over some moderately hot coals on the campfire make sure you check it every now and then though to make sure it's not burning if you do get it right the top will be lovely and melted and the base will be quite crunchy delicious [Music] while we're here Tim also knocked up one of his Phaeton dampers making it look too easy two cups of flour one sachet of yeast and a can of warm beer gets combined and well needed after leaving it to rise for a couple of hours give it another quick knead and throw it in the camp oven under a sheet valve oil stand this the same case chuck it on the campfire keep an eye on it and it will come out tops [Music] so I called in the Baton Hill camp yesterday afternoon which kind of signifiers for us the end of the Hay River track I saw a little bit of driving to do to get up to the plenty highway but in terms of Simpson desert driving we're pretty much done it was a pretty easy drive as well from Lake Caroline yesterday I think there's a 120 KS or so but the track did open up a lot more and allowed us to pick up a lot more speed so if you worried about timing and making up time you can do it on this section of track the next day the bush tucker tour kicked off from Baton Hill camp despite a persistent drizzle drain our tour guide for the day was showing and he was taking us on a big loop drive from Baton Hill out into the surrounding country it was a nice day of for driving even if the weather wasn't so great and they had a couple of challenging spots throwing in for good measure [Music] bush tucker was a little bit thin on the ground this time of year but we did come across some bush bananas it's growing the bonds in this country just put it on ice cold yeah and just turn it around and then leave ya skin and then that I just inside of it yeah but the seeds will be a more lighter than this screen it'll be more light cream than this then it'll be sweet to eat would you say you could survive eating just wish bananas yeah yeah if there's no food language here we call it a language what does it taste like much like bananas that bit sweeter the country ad he does have a startling Beauty open plains of short scrub it divided out by big rocky outcrops and stunted mountains it's a real privilege to come out and just see this country it's only open to tourism through the traditional owners and for that I'm really thankful so there you have it our south-to-north crossing if the Simpson Desert is now finished and it puts you on the plenty highway here when you're all done that way roughly 350 K's away is Alice Springs but we're heading eastwards through to bullier in the channel country because that's our way home

Channel: Pat Callinan's 4X4 Adventures

Views: 43,704

Rating: 4.8904109 out of 5

Keywords: desert, simpson desert, travel, 4WD, offroad, hay river, simpson, 4X4

Id: q9eA24qugGk

Length: 26min 35sec (1595 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017