http://www.againstthegrain.org.au is the story of me and three mates. We all live in wheelchairs and in August we rode quad bikes all the way from Perth to Adelaide. We visited our crash sites on the way and one of us, Anton, got married, in Uluru. We tried to blog from the road, but we didn't have much time. I will start uploading our blogs now... I hope you enjoy our adventure....
Simpson desert
Up early and off after a quick breakfast. Sam following in the Landcruiser. Conan in with Sam to film us meeting Bob in Birdsville. Rob in the Polaris with me to do the sound. Riding into the sunrise was great with us coming across 13 camels. They ran up onto the crest of a sand dune infront of us and proceeded along the top. A great silouete of them with the sun behind them. Hope we caught it on the helmet cameras. Up and down dunes at a good speed with no dust and plenty of traction. Some of the valleys were a bit wet/muddy but generally pretty good until we got close to Poepells Corner. Theses salt/mud lakes were sloppy and were injecting mud into the Polaris chassis. The more mud injected the lowere we sat. The lower we sat the more mud got injected oozing up through the holes in the floor. Eventually Rob and i had no rear suspension and were bottoming out on everything. People commented days later that they could still see the scraping tracks we left in the desert.
One salt lake ferret and I had a race and "just" got through with Rob pushing the Polaris. One salt lake Craig rolled onto his side which had everyone worried as we all shot out to help. He had one wheel in a wheel rut and the other on top. It was like a railway line, but someone had got bogged and dug two dirty great holes in the track. Steve Mercer stood in the hole with mud up to jis knees and ground level at hip height.
Starting to get late and we were not sure of the track. We eventually ran northwards (no sand dunes as they run North South) up a salt lake at high speed on a good flat smooth track. Turned rigt at the top of this in the QAA line into Birdsville. More sand dunes and getting dark. Last refuel right on dusk ready for the run into Birdsville. Spoke to some people who warned us of the "two" creek crossings coming up. Follow the sticks on the first one was the advice. We arrived in the dark and Rex proudly went straight across to the other side. Being a bit cautious we followed the guidance given and cruised through in about 300mm of water.
Off again in the dark up and down sand dunes until we came on a road closed sign with a creek crossing in front. We all thought they can't close the road now we are nearly there. A fairly well worn track went off south which we went down some way and decided this was going no where so we went back to the crossing with a plan to walk it and see how bad it was. Where angels fear to tread in comes Rex riding straight across yelling "no need to walk it, a piece of blub blub blub" as the bike dissappeared fully under water. Some one was heard saying "Rex, you should have walked it?" After getting Rex's bike out and finding no one had a spark plug spanner to suit, we hid it in the bush. Rex got in with Sam and we set off down the well worn track in hope that it would lead us somewhere. It was the detour around a big water lake/river that we did in the dark. When we got to the other side it was clearly marked detour. We all wish they had 2 detour signs as it would have made it a lot easier on Rex's bike!!!
Got back onto the GPS track and raced into town past Big Red. The lights of Birdsville were a welcoming sight but it seemed to take ages before we got there. We arrived at 11.45pm outside the Birdsville Hotel which was still open. A sign above the door said "open to 2.00am under managers discretion. We had to waitn for the other vehicls so we had all the parts for our wheelchairs so we could get into the pub. Met Chilli Pete who was the manager on duty and we used every second up to 2.00am celebrating. A Greta night and then settle into the motel rooms which we had booked via satelite phone the night before.
We found out later that a lot of people had been following our movements that day on Steve Mercer's spot which was linked to a web site that was tracking our location. Some people went to bed when they saw us stop for a time at the crossing where Rex drowned his bike. The faithfull that stayed up saw us continue on. Apparently a lot of anguish was caused as we detoured around things and appeared to be getting lost. Everyone knew we had no campming gear or warmth apart from the clothes we were in and our spare pub pair. What a day and night-Unbelievable
Written on 25 Aug 2010
Over 26 years since incident
Tags:
crash site revisited, got to get to Birdsville
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