Destinations > Across OZ Overlander Readers' Trip, part 1

Little could have prepared us for the stunning beauty we encountered the next day, huge bright red sand dunes covered in wind-created ripples and a myriad of insect and reptile tracks made for a photographer's delight and we were happy to make slow progress and soak it all up.

Mind you, the metre high soft crests on the dunes, which saw us practically bulldozing the lip off each dune, also caused the slow progress. The readers were working well as a team, looking after each other and assisting with snatch straps as needed whenever a vehicle bellied out on the sharp crests.

After a couple of days in the Northern Simpson we finally heard Matt's voice on the UHF as he followed us out to the dry Lake Caroline, arriving in time for a memorable photo of twenty fully loaded 4WDs lined up on an isolated island in the middle of the lake.

Two vehicles were missing because one of the LandCruisers had suffered a major suspension failure when the rear of the front torsion bar broke away from its chassis mounting. Our crew of expert guides and bush mechanics had the parts welded back together and the vehicle on the road in less than three hours and they joined us at our camp under the giant river gums at the edge of the dry Hay River.

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We spent two days with Lindsay Bookie and his cousins at the Batton Hill camp, they looked after us like we were kings. Lindsay is doing a marvellous job of opening up his land to visitors, and his bushtucker tour and sunset viewing of Goyder's Pillar are must-do events.
Overlander deadlines meant that Matt and Hendo had to peel off after just four days with the gang when we hit the Plenty Hwy. After reaching Alice Springs we had a rest day, giving us time to restock. A number of the readers also headed for home wishing they had another five weeks to continue this amazing trip.

We formed into one group and followed the Namatjira Drive to the beautiful Ormiston Gorge, which we explored on foot before continuing on an extremely corrugated road to Haasts Bluff. The scenery was stunning, huge rocky hills reaching out of the flat desert into that ever-present blue sky. There were lots of Kodak moments.
The road improved markedly as we reached the Sandy Blight Junction Road and we easily maintained 80kph, the long rooster tails of dust saw our convoy spread out over 20km but we were able to maintain radio contact over the UHF radios.

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