Vikings in Australia - Víkingar í Ástralíu

4/7 From Birdsville to the Cooper Creek

We began the day by packing up and repacking everything we needed into the car as we left the camper trailer at the Birdsville Caravan park. Crossing the Simpson desert with a camper trailer in tow isn't recommended!

We had our Oztent in the Ozpod on the top of our car. Apparently these Ozpods are not available anymore, but they make it a lot easier to carry the Oztent, plus it slides easy in and out of the pod when camping. All the other stuff we needed was crammed into the car. The most important was water for the desert crossing. The car has a 45l stainless steel water tank behind the rear seats, but everyone advises that you need about 4-5 liters per person per day of water for the desert crossing. We had planned to take six days, so we added a few 10 liter casks of water to have around 90l of water in total.
Once organised and the camper trailer parked we headed out of Birdsville along the Birdsville track. We planned to camp our first night at the Coopers creek, about 386km drive from Birdsville.

As we left Birdsville we noted an oncoming trio of 4WD coming in, with the first car towing the second. Not a good sign! However, the Birdsville track turned out to be quite easy to drive. Occasional corrugations but for the most part like a highway! As you drive southwards you are driving between low sand ridges most of the time at least until the track turns eastward. We stopped for lunch at a small spring that was just beside the road. Of course we had a few cattle running across the road in places as usual.

We also stopped at Mungerannie where I had a cup of Tea at the bar as I was driving. They had some old car wrecks parked outside which are probably a collectors item!

We arrived at the Coopers creek early afternoon and camped. It's a very dry place and you couldn't pick it as being in the middle of a river!