Simpson Desert Adventure: French Line, Hay River Track and the demonstration of a good reason to carry decent amounts of water

250 liters of unleaded petrol, 150 liters of fresh bore water, another 10 days worth of fresh fruit and vege purchased a week ago, besides countless cans of baked beans and other staples and of course some vacuum-packed meat products… is this enough for our little family and the Prado to head out into the Simpson Desert for an 850km crossing? Our original intention was to cross the Simpson from East to West starting from Birdsville. Since Eyre Creek is still flooded due to recent La Nina downpours, there is currently no way for anyone to do a latitudinal crossing. What a pitty we thought for a long time - after all, the car was set up for this kind of adventure, and both Anh-Dao and I were really keen to explore this ultimate four-wheel-drive playground.

As it is with all outdoor activities, you’ll often only find out about the real options once you get there. No one from the various roadhouses along the Oodnadatta track was sufficiently informed to give us even the slightest hope of doing an actual crossing of the Simpson Desert over the next couple of months. So we ended up at Dalhousie Springs, the final frontier on the Western edge of the Simpson, a great destination for its own right (perfectly heated natural artesian pool).
On our arrival, we immediately noticed the different atmosphere among the travellers. They all appeared to be of the Diesel kind… 4WD only, and no trailers, not even any off-road trailers. Despite our petrol car and the small kids, we didn’t really feel out of place. At least we weren't the only ones with a tent fixed on top of the roof. But we did appear to be the only ones without a bull bar, UHF radio antenna and jerrycans of spare fuel on the roof...
Everyone was very friendly and open for chatting about their gear, their latest adventures and ongoing itineraries. Funny enough, we all seemed to be disappointed about the closed tracks to Birdsville. Many appeared to be halfway satisfied by the idea of doing a 600km loop and come back out at the same place. I could not be warmed to this kind of venture… For me, it had to be a genuine crossing. Hang on, wasn’t there a track to get out from the North side to Jervois on the Plenty Highway? The best 4WD maps suggested it, but no one seemed to know about it – the Hay River Track.
From the telephone booth at Dalhousie Springs, I could finally reach the guys at Mt. Dare station, the last fuel station to the Simpson Desert, when coming in from Alice Springs. They confirmed a couple of cars had managed to come through the Hay River Track not long ago. They were the first ones to wake up the hope in me that there was a real option to cross the Simpson from where we were currently standing.
Funny enough, there was a convoy of three cars getting ready to do exactly this trip. They didn’t stop at Mt. Dare station, but lucky I found out myself by chatting. This is where I suddenly saw a real option for us to attempt the crossing, by joining a convoy.

Our discussions quickly spread through the camp, and suddenly there was another couple, Andrew and Therese, who were keen to give it a go as well. The same day we drove the 70km to Mt. Dare and back, on very rough roads, to arrange the permit to cross private aboriginal land, and stock up with ample fuel, food and water provisions for an adventure into the scarcely defined, highly remote and pretty demanding four-wheel-drive tracks of the Simpson Desert with its famous red sand dunes (the world’s largest system of parallel sand dunes), challenged by densely overgrown green vegetation due to above-average rainfalls over the last four years.

Yes we can! Together, in a convoy of two cars. A day behind the other convoy of three cars, after our dear friends detected a leak in their ancillary diesel tank and had to return to Mt. Dare for a welding job. With nearly 200kg of load on the roofrack for the initial part of the journey through the French line (due to its numerous soft sand dunes one of the most demanding of Australia’s famous 4WD tracks). This is what we told our primary emergency contacts, Sam and Fanny back in Sydney, using the Ranger's office telephone, before heading into the 8-10 days adventure through nomansland. Thanks to them, we felt sort of in safe hands despite not having any UHF radio, or satellite phone with us (but our Kiwi friends did ;-). Sam and Fanny passed on the latest news to our close family and kindly confirmed they were ready to jump if we called for help using our SPOT Satellite Messenger with integrated GPS positioning system.

The first section of the trip was a dazzling 330km ride on a tiny track crossing hundreds of dunes at average speed of 20kms per hour. At Lake Poeppel, a bit less than half of the distance between Mt. Dare and Jervois, the two petrol stations at start and finish line of the adventure, we saw the first signs of floodings. We had to bypass the lake Northwards. We guessed our track through the bush, following the tracks of a couple of cars that had seemed to know what they were doing. This was four days into the desert, where we got close to the Queensland border, only to leave South Australia and head into the Northern Territory. What a relieve when we met a convoy of three other cars that have just come from the opposite direction. By the way, they were all Toyotas - we didn't see a single Nissan Patrol on the entire trip through the Simpson. The drivers confirmed that some sections of the route were very hard to follow, one could get lost in three meters high scrub, set the car on fire after catching too much Spinifex grass under car and lighting it through the mere heat of the engine, or wreck the car by rolling into one of the countless wash-outs created from the recent floods. Wasn't this why we came out here first of all?

Together with our fabulous Kiwi mates, we enjoyed every single minute of the journey! They helped us experience true team spirit, and remained very supportive whenever we had special deals with our Prado (theirs was the larger V8 version of the Landcruiser which according to other Landcruiser 200 owners can pull any car out of trouble...- but lucky enough we had our own sand tracks and could dig ourselves out), or with the kids (no, they were less an additional weight for the Prado than our kitesurfing gear…). The kids were extremely cool, too, by the way ;-) The teamspirit really started with them loosing their bikes from the tail-rack and us not noticing it… Hence while they backtracked 20kms over one of the prettier sections of the French Line, we had the time to chose the beautiful back of a red sand dune to set camp and prepare dinner for all. We ended up sharing dinner cooking tasks for the rest of the trip, which was a great treat both in terms of different bushtucker experiences, and in terms of having a bit more to enjoy sunset time after a very busy and tiring day of rather demanding four-wheel driving, nappy-changing, camp setting and cold-nights freezing…

Unfortunately we didn’t really have the chance to do final teamspirit celebration at the end of this epic journey. One day before reaching the Northern end of the desert, we were confronted with a real team challenge. It’s a challenge everyone is aware of and we all hope it never happens. It’s for such and other similar situations that you want to bring along all sorts of safety provisions, such as more than plenty of water, or fuel, or food, or spare parts, or training to handle emergency situations. This time this kind of accident happened to us. Out of a joyful situation, in the dark, Oceane ran into my legs while I was trying to pour boiling water into the thermos bottle. A decent amount swapped over the pan onto her head and down her face and body. I immediately yelled out for cold water, and lucky enough found a nearby open bottle while the others rushed to get the bigger water cans.
Oceane was screaming, feeling pain and being confused by all the shouting and running about. Anh-Dao immediately started to sing a song and try to calm everyone down. We kept pouring fresh water onto her head to cool the burns, but we didn’t have sufficient light to see which areas were affected and required contentrated action. Therese provided first-aid support to cover the wounds, while Andrew was taking care of Laetitia who was very worried as she didn’t know what was going on. I was under shock myself, but was still sort of able to give hand to the various tasks left and right and clear up the battlefield while Anh-Dao was already up in the tent to soothe Oceane and try to put her to sleep. Lucky enough we all did have some kind of a repairing sleep to gain force and confront the following day.
Oceane woke up in the morning with plenty of energy and a surprisingly generous mood, even though her left eye was completely shut due to swollen skin. We calmly broke camp and shortly afterwards successfully faced our first and last bog of the entire the Simpson trip. Glad to have fixed some leaky water tanks before they ran empty, glad to have restrained from using too much water for dishwashing, showering or shaving, glad to have had full jerrycans of clear, fresh water readily available despite approaching the end of a long journey and getting close to fresh water sources again, we continued our trip, as if everything was ok again.

It was after a couple of hours of driving, when the outdoor temperature thermometer started to climb, that parts of Oceane’s skin appeared to develop further swelling. We just happened to cross the elder of the local aboriginal community, Lindsay Bookie, who sort of looked pretty worried at the sight of Oceane and let us know that there was a medical outstation at roughly 250km from the current position, that we suddenly felt we were probably taking things to negligently, and in fact needed to act more urgently to avoid any further remorse in the future.
That last day in the Simpson, we ended up doing 160kms of remaining tiny 4WD tracks to next petrol station (after an average of 70kms the seven days before) and attempting another 330kms on the - rather sandy and corrugated - Plenty Highway to the nearest Hospital in Alice Springs. We had decided to drive as far as possible, as far as our car and our forces would safely allow us to. We reached Alice after a further night camping along the way, and finally checked into the emergency department 40 hours after the incident.
Oceane is now in excellent care, and the medical team has been in close contact with some specialist in Adelaide to make sure they are handling the case as good as possible. We are all in fairly high spirits, possibly still an effect from the unforgettable experience in the wonderful Simpson Desert.
The day of the accident, Oceane had broken the necklace she’d received from Momo, her grandmother on her last visit to Australia. Anh-Dao was so thoughtful that night she told me I’d better fix that necklace quickly. Oceane has got it on again…

Click this link for our photo set of the Simpson Desert!