Saturday, Oct 14, 2017 at 14:54
Daniel, I think there have been some good responses here, and you are obviously good at taking advice.
I would not do a crossing based on your vehicle, fuel type, equipment, or other.
You would need to be a lot more prepared with gear to buy to enable a crossing, something you may be open to, or you may prefer to keep your travel needs to what you will need for other travels, and not be loaded with gear you might not use again.
As you hinted early on, you are open to just doing a little explore into the desert, and not a full crossing.
The vehicle will use a lot of petrol, and really the 60lt gas will only get you into the desert and out again on the easier terrain, mostly you may need to petrol power to get through the dunes.
I'd estimate you'd need a good 170lt of petrol to be safe-ish, minus maybe 20 - 30lt if you use your gas where suitable outside the main dunes, so around 150lt carried safe.
That is a good 5 more jerries than you have, and carrying them in the cabin ?
Maybe ok for poly jerry cans on the roof if you have a rack and couple of ratchet straps.
That's only a GUESS, some of these petrol cruisers are thristy, and especially so with dunes / sand.
Water, need at least 60lt carried as it could be getting quite hot by then, but 10lt bladder cask cartons are easy to store spread around.
Not only for drinking, but here is usually a need to cover yourself in case a stick stakes your radiator, there's 10 - 15 lt, and some sort of radiator repair stop leak.
You will need a UHF, even just the basic hand held for communications, monitoring ch10, a radio is mandatory in the SA Desert section where the Desert Parks Pass covers, as too a sand flag per their specifications.
You'll need a way to deflate tyres, as these will likely have to be reduced to around 18psi for the sand . . . you can do this with a stick and / or tyre gauge if need be, but you will need to have a compressor to reinflate as needed (around $100) and a tyre repair (plug) kit.
Then there's the weather.
It's going to be getting quite warm out there by early November, it can be very hot too, lots of flies.
I would consider this . . .
Do a run west from
Birdsville to the QLD / NT /
SA border corner, the biggest dunes are between Big Red and Peoppel Corner, great camping in the dune corridors.
You won't need a DPP for the SA section as you won't be going into that.
A nice 2 day run.
You might choose to
camp in the QLD Parks section (QAA Line), from memory it might be $5 or $6 a night per person.
You could do a short run up
Hay River Track if you liked, just to
check it out, but otherwise just return via the way you came on QAA Line.
A compressor and tyre repair kit is still a useful thing for remote travels you may be doing elsewhere, but you could do without it if you were to drive very slowly the 40km from Big Red back to Birdsdsville, or ask if you can borrow someones 'air' to reinflate to a reasonable 30psi or so as a stop gap measure.
Really though, being self reliant is almost a necessity as you just don't know who's going to be around, and many are keen to get into town after their run across the desert.
You can hire a sat phone from BV for the min 4 days period, though for $160 fee you could just prepare
well and expect you should be fine for a 2 day return trip, letting BV
Police know your plan by leaving them a bit of a written overview of your intentions, and that you will call in and advise all clear afterwards.
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