We made good on our promise to return to the Simpson Desert with Ed and Karen whom we met on the trip last year. We had started planning late last year but realised three weeks before leaving that due to the unexpected amounts of rain we had to redo some of our plans. There were another few hickups like Markus injuring his back a week before leaving and two of the other couples that meant to join us pulling out on the last day.

Nonetheless we left Sydney on a dry afternoon and headed to Mudgee for the night. The dry weather only lasted an hour out of Sydney and then it was bucketing down again. After a very nice dinner and a night at a motel we headed off in the early morning and eventually arrived in Charleville 11 hours and roughly 970km later.

The next day we met up with Karen and Ed and their daughter Jocelyn, her husband Mick and their two kids Milla and Henry and headed towards Longreach. Along the way we visited the Black Stump, got hit by a stone which cracked our windscreen, saw the Tree of Knowledge and soaked in an artesian hot spring.

From Longreach we made our way to Alice Springs via Winton, Boulia and the Plenty Highway and arrived there on Thursday mid morning.

After some wrong decisions and drama we eventually got our windscreen replaced, had checked into our accommodation and done some shopping. Then came a day of remote work and packing and on Saturday morning we met up with the Newman and McKinnons again to travel south first to Chambers Pillar for a night and then on to Lambert Centre (the geographical centre of mainland Australia). Most of the roughly 400km was corrugated dirt road and the driving was slow. But Ed and I could tick off two items from our bucket lists.

After Lambert we headed back to Alice for another two days of shopping, remote working, and final desert preparations. Bill and Gina had also arrived in Alice and we met them for dinner the night before heading towards the desert. The rest of the Newman clan had also arrived (Ed and Karen’s son Matt, two of their other son Simon’s sons Angus and Oscar and Angus’ partner Teja).

On Wednesday we left Alice and headed towards Santa Teresa and Old Andado where we arrived two days later. From Old Andado we drove northeast and finally entered the Simpson desert. We spent the next 8 days travelling along the Madigan Line, crossing many many dunes and marveled at how green and colourful the desert was after all the rain. Much more than the year before. We also saw a lot more wildlife like different types of lizards, birds, a couple snakes, a camel, a few dingos, interesting insects and a couple of native bees, emus and unfortunately also thousands of flies.

Before heading off towards Big Red and Birdsville, we spent one more night on the French line (going east to west for a while). Then finally we had to say goodbye to the desert and return to civilisation in the form of a couple cold drinks and a meal at the Birdsville Hotel.

Since the weather forecast was predicting more rain, we decided to say farewell to our travel companions earlier than planned and head back to Sydney so as not to get stuck somewhere in the Queensland far west. At first we went up north for a while and visited Bedourie and the hot springs there. From there we drove east and spent the night at Windoora.

From Windoora we drove through to Charlotte Plains via Cunnamulla which has a campsite and also hot springs which were nice, but crowded. From there we had hoped to get Sydney or at least close to but had to do a detour via Boomi because of flooding closing off the highway. We still made it to Moree in the early afternoon, headed for a swim at the hot springs there, then continued on.

But by 8pm we had only made it to Muswellbrook and were both too tired to make it all the way. So we spent our last night at a motel in Kurri Kurri and finished the last 160km in the early morning hours.

Photos from our big trip are in the gallery.