The hunt for Big Red

Big Red, the Simpson Desert's biggest sand dune, is the major tourist attraction around Birdsville (and pretty well the only one ....) — the caravan park runs sunset tours out there most days. It's the start (or the finish, depending on your direction) of the Simpson Desert, and a good test. If you can make it over Big Red, and the next couple of sand dunes, you won't have any problems with the rest of the dunes in the Simpson (theoretically). We were keen to take the truckasaurus out there and test it out. We packed our requisite supply of water, plus a bottle of champagne and some cheese, olives and Jatz, and headed out there.

We'd invited Dusty and Teresa to join us for the sunset champagne after they'd closed up at the Bakery, which gave us some time to explore around. It's 30 kms out, with the scenery getting progressively flatter and rockier (the gibbers, it really is a desert of stones) and then some smaller sand hills start. Big Red is indeed pretty big, while Evan was letting air out of the tyres in preparation I decided to walk up, it's amazing how much higher it looks from the top — you can see for miles, and the car looks a long way down. It took Evan three goes to make it up, but finally he got there, parked the car on the top and got out the folding camp chairs in preparation for the sunset viewing.

Another car load of people arrived, they were from one of the further stations and had come up for the bronc branding, and were looking around while they were there. The kids raced up and down the dune, and rolled around in the sand, and generally had a good time. "Take your shoes off, it feels great!" they said, so I did. The sand is amazingly fine, and quite cool, it feels lovely on your feet. I was enjoying myself until I trod on one of the enormous burrs that are everywhere, so retreated to the camp chair to pull the thing out.

Dusty and Teresa arrived just as the sun was setting, so we toasted our new adventure, stood around going "How's the serenity?" and drove carefully back to Birdsville, watching out for livestock on the road. Dusty had a large vat of filling for his delicious butter chicken pies which he invited us around to eat some of, with rice and a salad on the side. It's all good ....

It didn't look that hard from the bottom ...


... but it took three goes to get there.


The truckasaurus has conquered Big Red!


Some fellow sightseers.


Waiting for the sunset.


Another vast sky sunset ....



Except Dusty then told us that where we had been was actually only LITTLE Red, Big Red was about a kilometre further along the sand dune. So a couple of days later we went back out, took the track that ran along the base of the sand dune, and arrived at BIG Red, and yes, it was bigger. It was the same sand dune as Little Red, but further along. Evan deflated the tyres to 30 psi and gave it a go, but after three tries gave up. A man in the car park, obviously far more experienced than we were, said we would have to deflate to about 20 psi, which we decided against since it takes ages to pump them back up again with the compressor, so we walked up. We could see the next sand dune across in the distance, there were a group of vehicles trying to climb it, and having quite a lot of trouble. It must be very hard work to cross all 1100-odd sand dunes of the Simpson Desert ....

Now THIS is Big Red!


From the top, looking down to the car park.


The next sand dune off in the distance. We watched three vehicles have several attempts to get over it.


We had the place to ourselves. The owners of the other vehicles left soon after we got there.