Corner Country and Strzelecky Desert Crossing

What a feeling! At last we’ve left civilization, with the last IGA in Bourke behind us. The time of uncertainty about whether we are ready or not, having the right stuff with us or not, was finally over when we got onto the first unsealed section of our route, some 40kms West of Bourke. The red-coloured sandy road had an impact on us which I can barely describe in words, but rather with a wide smile on my face…
This next lap started with an enjoyably warm evening among half a dozen Coolabah trees 1km off the main track… The following day we got onto the Gibber Plains of the Eastern section of Sturt National Park, and from there into the first red sand dunes of the Strzelecki Desert.

Before crossing the border to South Australia, we spent another night at Fort Grey near Lake Pinaroo, which according to local rangers was full of water for the first time since 1974. There was wind, so we had to check for a kiteable section of the lake. Unfortunately there were a bit too many dead trees and invisible tree trunks around, so we had to give up on our idea… Instead, we had our first adventurous encounters with hundreds of mice that came out at dusk and started to crawl onto everything including our very own trousers… Except for the kids’ footy ball and some soft sections of insulation of the car’s motor hoses, everything seemed to have survived that mouse attack.

Cameron Corner was the next waypoint on our route. It somehow felt quite cool to have three of my fingers placed on three different states at the same time, while Anh-Dao was testing the nearby Dingo-fence for its stability… Yes, with the crossing to South-Australia, we have now moved into Dingo country… Strangely enough, from now on Kangaroo sightings became much rarer… Instead, the next night we heard Dingos howling at full moon near the Montecolina Bore, which in the middle of the desert provides a source of warm thermal water from the depth of the artesian basin.

The road conditions were a lot better than we’d expected, and we only needed five days to travel from Bourke to the Northern Flinders Range. I liked the image of approaching those mountains from far through the flat desert – it felt like approaching an island after an ocean crossing… except that the flat desert looked unusually green…

Check the Flickr photo set ofthe crossing of the Strzelecki Desert starting at the Corner Country (Fort Grey in Sturt National Park and Cameron Corner)