The Way Home
The Birdsville Track or Strzelecki Track up to Birdsville? It was a hard choice but since we hadn’t travelled along either route it was kind of a win-win either way plus gives us a good reason to come back.
The Birdsville Track has been on Sean’s bucket list and I don’t think he was disappointed. After lots of goodbyes at Beltana and stocking the freezer with some fresh pasture fed lamb, we made sure Lucie had let go of the puppy and that Chocolate the Alpaca wasn’t sitting in the backseat, we made our way to Marree, the start of the Birdsville track.
We had lunch in the pub, which was filled with plenty of colourful characters and lots of history about Tom Kruse, the original outback mailman that the kids had been reading up on. Lunch in these outback pubs is no delicate affair. The reality is more like an episode of Man Versus Food – enormously scary burgers with every meat/bacon/egg/cheese combo they can come up with, with very limited salad options – think tinned beetroot and pineapple rings! Ashton somehow always manages to woof the lot, with the other two having a bowl of hot chips & tomato sauce. My inner nutritionist is crying….
The Birdsville track is definitely about the journey, as there really isn’t anything along the way other than scenery. It’s amazing though, how a dry flat landscape can constantly change. While we didn’t see any roos or emus, the birdlife was pretty spectacular. Not that we’re turning into twitchers, or that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s pretty hard not to be impressed by massive Wedge tailed eagles circling above and flocks of little things swooping playing chicken with the car – the Jeep did claim a couple! We even saw some Brolgas at a waterhole not far from the side of the road.
There was plenty of water and plenty of greenery in the creeks and around in the paddocks. Lots of very healthy looking cattle and we even became part of a muster in our roadside campsite. We could hear the helicopter and the next thing a herd of cattle went wandering past, with the pilot doing a flyover & a wave out the side of his chopper.
We passed about 6 cars the whole trip, including a random in his twenties driving a Toyota Corolla who flagged us down and wanted to know how much longer he had to go as he was “dying out here”. Ummm, so not everyone was as well prepared for Armageddon as we were!
After 2 days and 580 odd kilometres we made it!
It was pretty exciting and the photos speak for themselves.
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