The journey all began back towards the end of last year. The initial plan was to get away from Sydney for the Olympics and head to The Cape. However time constraints meant we only had two weeks, thus needed an alternative destination. After many beers and late nights sifting over maps, we decided to tackle the Simpson Desert, East to West and beyond. The plan was optimistic considering all we wanted to pack in, but we figured we could alter the plans on the fly depending upon given circumstances.

The planned route was:

Sydney - Bourke  - Charlieville - Bridsville - Simpson via French Line  - Mt Dare - Alice - Kings Canyon - Uluru - Coober Pedy - Williams Creek - Lake Eyre - Broken Hill - Home again.

Following is the extract from my daily journal, plus some other bits and pieces that come to mind as I type this.

All packed up and ready to go..!!!

Day 1: Saturday 16th September

All packed and ready to rendezvous with James and his Hilux, we fired up the discovery and headed off to James' place. James' Hilux had been undergoing urgent repairs over the last month which included a rebuild of the transfer case, and replacement of the whole rear end with a 'Cruiser rear end. Time nearly beat us and James was still putting the final touches on the car as we rolled into his driveway. We had our concerns about taking an untested vehicle into the desert, but decided it was too late to stop, and plus we had enough tools and spare parts to almost build a new truck from scratch anyway. 

We repacked all the luggage into the appropriate cars. We decided to leave the Hilux carrying all the jerries and anything else of significant weight to assist in the Disco's fuel consumption. This was probably a poor decision in hindsight, but more on that later.

On the road and it was not long before we passed through Bathurst. We could not pass the up the chance of doing a lap of Mt Panorama. James plodded on at a slow speed as he was still running in the new Detroit diff in the back. Di and I headed for the circuit to complete a lap of the famed tarmac.

On the start line of Mt Panorama

Was not long afterwards we caught up with James, and headed for Bourke, a long drive and our first night from home in a cheap and nasty Motel. On the way, I caught a 'Roo....named him thumpa, as that was the noise he made as he collided with the ARB bar. Lucky for us, no damage sustained, the bar had paid for itself...and lucky (in a way) for the Roo he was killed on impact. In Di's eyes, I had become ......a murderer......

The local dog at the Bourke Motel.

Day 2: Sunday 17th September

We made and early start and had planned to make it somewhere up near Quilpie by dusk. A long and boring stint, broken only by a magical hamburger found in Charlieville. Driving through Quilpie we ended up camping beside the road about 50km's out of town. 

First camp, 50kms outside of Quilpie.