Day 1 on The Simpson

Day 5 - Day 1 on The Simpson

Monday, 10 September 2012

Very excited to finally be on The Simo. First part of track just following a fence line. We had heard from Jol Fleming that 3 vehicles were booked to stay at Baton Hill for the night of 10th so we had thought to get ahead of them then, should we have any problems it wouldn't bee too long a wait until help came. A quick detour to check out Goyder's Pillar. Didn't stay too long as a sign on the gate had said station vehicles only! Moved on to Baton Hill. this is Lyndsay Booka's place. The elder of this part of The Simo. We had met him in Alice at Jol's place. He runs bush tucker tours from here, but we had decided at $85 pp not too do it. What if you had to taste your finds? (wichety grubs for tea anyone?) No one around so we pushed on.

We're amazed how green and overgrown the place was - a desert? Really?

After the fence line disappeared the track became very windy and bumpy. It felt as if we were driving around an obstacle course (of wattles!). Came across 3 vehicles pulled over for morno's. They were travelling north and were in fact the group Jol had told us about, ha ha, they were travelling in the opposite direction to us!! But it was good to track info and they also said there was a vehicle an hour or so ahead of us.

The Dingo Spring was very interesting. lyndsay told us it was good water so we filled up our water bottles. Decided it was hair wash time, so fetched a bucket of water, which I promptly knocked over once I was lathered up. Cries of help, please fetch more water, we're not met with haste and I was left bent over with soap in my ears and eyed, while PAV fiddled around doing other, more important stuff! This place was a natural spring, but with no aboriginals living there any more it wasn't maintained. Lyndsay and Jol were instrumental in establishing this spring to encourage dingos to return to the area who would then in turn keep the feral (foxes, rabbits, cats) down. Very inspiring set up. We had lunch (after my fresh bucket of water had been fetched) and then continued south. The track became quite scratchy, but the wattles were in flower, lots of birds - and lots of bumps and we made slow progress around all the twists and turns.

Coming to Lake Caroline we turned West to check it out. Crossed the very soft sandy bed of the Hay River and caught up with the vehicle we had heard was ahead of us. Said hello to Lange and Inara before exploring the Lake. Quite an eerie place, we drove around the perimeter on the hard mud. If we hadn't had GPS it would have been hard to find the exit off the lake! Returned to set up camp near to Lange and Inara.

We had a lovely evening with them and agreed to travel the rest of the Hay Track with them.

	Sunset near Jervois [Map]		Goyder's Pillar [Map]
	Batton Hill [Map]		Reflections [Map]
	Dingo Spring [Map]		On the Wing [Map]
	Zebra Finch [Map]		Hair Wash with Dingo Water! [Map]

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