Curried Camel pies in Birdsville and Big Red

After four nights in Birdsville, the baker called us 'nearly locals'.  What a spectacular welcome we had.  It just happened the Australian Airforce Roulettes arrived the same day, and put on a fantastic acrobatic air show at sunset. The six of them did all sorts of manouvers as the whole town stood and watched on the street outside the Birdsville hotel.

Birdsville is all about the people.  Its such a friendly town with some really interesting characters.  It has a great Bakery run by Dusty, who bakes the best pies.  Our favourite was the curried camel, but we also tried the kangaroo & claret and the lamb shank.  Hannah went to town on the sausage rolls and Ben took a liking to the pink lamingtons.  Of course I had my daily dose of a 'real cappuccino'.

We met John Menzies who owns the working museum.  This place is incredible, so much old stuff he's collected over the years and just about everything works.  He was a drover on outback stations all over the country as well as competing in rodeos in Australia and overseas.  His shows are funny, don’t dare interrupt!

The only artist in town is Wolfgang John.  We were the only ones in his little studio.  He is very talented and nice to talk to.  He just loves the solitude of the desert and often takes off out there, especially when the Birdsville races bring 6000 visitors to his quiet little town.

Of course we frequented the Iconic Birdsville Pub.  It doesn’t look much from the outside but from the inside it would hold its own in any yuppie Sydney suburb. Its got character and definately has that outback pub feel with all its memorabilia.  Actually its like a pictorial museum of the town and surrounding cattle stations.  The food is great too, we had dinner with some people we'd met and spent the day with out at Big Red.

WE CONQUERED BIG RED.....Well Scott and the kids did, I climbed up to take the action shots of all the attempts.  Big red is one of the first sandunes of hundreds that stretch across the Simpson desert.  We got talking to some other campers that were keen to head out and ended up in a convoy of four.  There was a detour track in place as the normal road out was still cut from the floods.  The track out was like being on a roller coaster going up and down numerous dunes before reaching Big Red.  Hannah did a great job on our hand held UHF radio, warning any oncoming vehicles at the bottom of each dune that we were coming up and over. 

After tackling Little Red, we gave Big Red a go, well several, but all vehicles reached the top.  The view was amazing and the reason for the detour became immediately apparent looking over the other side to an inland lake!  On the way back our 4WD GPS indicated that we were driving along less than a metre away from the SA Border.

Next blog will be about our ups n downs on the Birdsville Track, and our Lake Eyre adventures.