Simpson desert in a bus!

[Discomark]

I was recently telling a friend of my Fathers about a trip we made crossing the Simpson desert in our Disco 1. She later explained that she had done a similar trip with the family in a bus back in 1984 with 28 passengers! At first I thought she was talking about a trip to Birdsville but as she then went on to mention the French line etc I knew she was talking about actually crossing the Simpson :o

The "bus" was a purpose built vehicle with a GVM of 17,272kg but still its pretty impressive to cross the Simpson in something that size.

Edit. Just added a couple of missing pages to the PDF.

[loanrangie]

I wonder if the bus is still operating or is it now 50 Hyundai's :o.

[chook73]

How funny my old man build the body of this, we were only talking about it last night.....

Thanks for sharing the article.

[V8Ian]

'Tis funny, I was only thinking about it last week. I apparently recalled it wrongly, thinking it was a fairly standard Denning with bogie drive and suspension mods.
Am I remembering another coach that crossed from east to west? Perhaps Zulu Delta can enlighten us.

[bob10]

'Tis funny, I was only thinking about it last week. I apparently recalled it wrongly, thinking it was a fairly standard Denning with bogie drive and suspension mods.
Am I remembering another coach that crossed from east to west? Perhaps Zulu Delta can enlighten us.
Not thinking of Bill King, by any chance? I'm reading his great book, King of the Outback. The company is called AAT Kings now, I believe. He took passengers in the footsteps of explorers such as Burke & Wills, Leichhardt , Sturt & Stuart. Bob

[ramblingboy42]

I have an idea 'West Darling Tours' out of Broken Hill may have done Simpson crossings in one of their specialised coaches.

Knew the family but I'm buggered if I can recall much.

It was in the 70's.......my excuse.

[ramblingboy42]

Yes...memory recall a minute after posting above.

The operator of West Darling Tours was Colin Jack.

[bob10]

Sorry to hijack your thread, but from the transport hall of fame....


06 KING Bill & Val (http://www.roadtransporthall.com/k/408-06-king-bill-a-val)

[zulu Delta 534]

'Tis funny, I was only thinking about it last week. I apparently recalled it wrongly, thinking it was a fairly standard Denning with bogie drive and suspension mods.
Am I remembering another coach that crossed from east to west? Perhaps Zulu Delta can enlighten us.

If we are talking about the same vehicle, back in the 70's, Bill Hand's "Sundowner" "bogie drive" Denning was in fact fitted with a cut away body over the rear axles and they could quite simply couple the two axles together using rubber tracks, virtually making the vehicle a half track and pretty well unstoppable.
Operated as a husband and wife team but I can't remember her name.
Another weird machine was the one that Hans Tholstrup used to go to Cape York and a few other places. Charged exorbitant prices but got the following through his previous antics with mini minors and 1800s. We came across him on the Cape York trip just after he had set fire to the thing for the thitd time, offered assistance but were told politely that he didn't need any. This coach was powered by a Cat diesel running through an Allison box and on that one trip suffered 18 break-downs. The stories gleaned from the (hard to keep quiet) passengers told an entirely different story from that of their illustrious leader Hans.
The crossing of the desert was not that rare, single axle Leyland 401s on Albion VK47 chassis did it fairly regularly. (I know of one that was sitting a bit west of Docker River waiting for a new set of springs to arrive when a couple of blokes were trying to film a couple of red Series one Landrovers crossing a sandhill. They had a lot of trouble trying to keep inquisitive passengers from coming into shot of the documentary they were making.)
Bill King used to use a variety of vehicles on his desert trips, 6x6 Pinzgauers and much to my surprise I found about 4 of our old tippers (Inter AB180 4x4s) that had seen a fairly hard life in Vietnam converted to tourist buses and doing the desert run in the late 70's.
A lot of modern day 4 wheel drivers would be absolutely astounded at some of the places the old Leyland and Commer coaches went in the early days. It was a common sight to see an Albion/Leyland drive up to, and hook up a GM powered machine in the wet and skull drag them out of trouble. The difference between Power and Torque!
Regards
Glen

[V8Ian]

Thanks Glen, it was indeed the Sundowner I was thinking about. It was on the cover of a Truck & Bus, cresting a sand dune.

Love the P5, the counterpart to my old Super Snipe.

[SBD4]

08 HAND Bill and Doreen (http://www.roadtransporthall.com/h/512-08-hand-bill-and-doreen)

https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/imported/2015/06/464.jpg

[SBD4]

An old news paper article from 1972:

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19720528&id=5nlWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fOUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=3594,7584802&hl=en

[V8Ian]

Thanks for that SB, the picture is the one used on the magazine cover. A very interesting article from the SMH too.