The entrance to the Dalhousie Spring - 37 degrees of therapy Steve enjoying a cold beer at sunset

The Mt Dare Hotel - it's a rough drive but the beer was cold

12th and 13th July, 2009
After Oodnadatta we drove straight up to Dalhousie Springs. Again, we found the road corrugated and rutted to buggery. So much in fact, that when we opened the esky for our evening cocktail, the twist tops on two of my Strongbows had twisted open. Lucky Steve had heaps of beer, I was worried I’d have to have a dry night!

The springs don’t disappoint in any way. The temperature is about 37 degrees and so good for the body after the corrugations, ruts and dust we’ve endured for the past couple of days. After a while of soaking, we needed to get out of the springs to cool down. However, it was so cold in the air that it didn’t take long before we jumped back in. There’s also hundreds of these tiny fish that nibble and suck on your skin if you stand still for too long. I suppose they eat all the dry skin and stuff. It was a brilliant place to re-charge for a couple of nights as this is the gateway to the Simpson Desert. This is also the spot where you talk to other people about the impending crossing. When we mentioned we were towing a trailer most people would smirk and say “Good Luck!”. Thankfully, we also met Kevin from the Portland 4WD Club, who also drives a Paj and said “Go for it, you can do it!” We didn’t really know what to think and our mood was darkening.

We also met up with a fellow that we met in Alice Springs who was crossing the desert with a mate on motor bikes. They were as keen as mustard, but one day into the crossing one of them flew over the front of the bike and became heavily concussed and that was the end of that. The Mt Dare recovery truck came in about 4:00am that morning picking up the bikes. Our mood darkened more.

We also took a drive up to Mt Dare to fill up on fuel, grab our last meat pie and have a beer. The road was horrendous (are you getting the recurring theme about the roads yet?) but worth the drive as the pub is a beautifully friendly place to stop and have a chat.

Although the campgrounds at Dalhousie were full to overflowing, we stayed quite insular within our own tent. Our mood was starting to get somber as we considered what we were about to attempt. We’d heard the horror stories, we’d read the horror stories, and up to then we had actually met one of the horror stories – we were hoping like hell we didn’t become one too.

One night we met the local Ecologist and started chatting. I ran some facts by him that were given to us by a park employee in Yulara (such as identifying how pure a dingo is by his tracks - see earlier post from Ayres Rock). He found that quite amusing, and we learnt "if you want to know anything about your surroundings - ask the ecologist not park staff!"