Vikings in Australia - Víkingar í Ástralíu

12/7 From Mt Dare to Purni Bore

Finally our journey over the Simpson Desert has arrived! We packed up and then filled the tanks at Mt Dare before leaving. Thankfully they still had plenty of Diesel fuel. We then drove the 11km to the Dalhousie turn off and drive towards Dalhousie.

The first stop was at the Opossum Waterhole. It has some significant meaning in Aboriginal dream time stories. We had a quick look at the Waterhole as it's next to the road. There is still quite a lot of water there at this time of year. The road was pretty corrugated which made it slower going than normal.

The next stop was at the Crispe Bore. There they have a water tank and camping facilities as well. From there we drove to Dalhousie springs. We checked out the camp site and facilities before parking the cars in the visitor car park and walking to the Dalhousie spring. There were quite a number of people there already, but thankfully the spring is huge in size. So there is plenty of space. The water was quite warm or around body temperature so it was great to relax after all the driving. The spring also has thousands of small Goby fish that nibble at your dead skin and hair. Nothing you can do about it. Just have to bear having a beauty treatment for free with a grin!
We took some photos and then had lunch back at the visitor car park. There we met a couple heading home with some excess firewood, which the happily offloaded onto us. Annika and Tim took the logs in their car.
Then it was decided to head on-wards and check out the campsite at Purni bore. As you leave Dalhousie Springs you drive some flat sections and claypans until you start hitting some small sand dunes. Just prior to that I stopped and reduced the tire pressure in my wheels so it would be easier to drive in the sand.

When we arrived at Purni bore there was a swag of campers in the overflow campsite, but no one in the normal campsite. After some discussions we decided to camp in the normal campsite and drove just past the facilities. There is both a toilet and a shower there, but the shower is cold.

The Purni bore was sunk back in 1963 by a French petrolium company. It is about 1,880 meters deep. It produces about 18 liters per second of 85 degree hot water. At the time it was capped and sealed, but the seal corroded away and the water eventually flowed freely. This created this hot oasis of water which attracted lots of animal life. Later it was realized that this free flowing water had reduced the water in Dalhousie Springs. To reduce the impact the bore was capped again in 1987, but rather than a complete cap they still allow some reduced water to run into the Oasis plus provide water for the facilities.

As it was late in the day we set up camp and had our dinner and then got a very nice sunset.