After breaking camp, the Patrol towed the ailing Defender to a high point so he could get a rolling start in 2nd gear. As we had been traveling in 2nd mostly anyway, the plan was to start of in 2nd and stay in 2nd. We traveled this way a short distance before a voice on the radio announced “I have no forward motion at all”. We all stopped. The vehicles in front boiled the billies for smoko while the Patrol towed the Defender up to where we were, and we had a cuppa and discussed what would happen from here in. We were on our way to Madigan’s Camp 15, which is on the Hay River track anyway, so we decided the Patrol would continue towing on the planned route, hopefully to Birdsville, where the spare parts were to be arriving a few days later.

Again the only sign of Madigan’s Camp 15 is a plaque placed by Owen Correa. Here we met a party that had driven up from the south and they advised they could see no problems with towing a vehicle though that way, as it was pretty easy going.

Obviously, the 2 Defenders out in front were traveling much faster than the Patrol towing the other defender so we had to make a number of stops to allow them to catch up. At no time did we wish to be out of radio contact. It was a case of picking a point where we could get out and do something, like climb a dune, check the track ahead, check benchmark posts for tags etc while we waited.

We stopped at Madigan’s Camp 16. This is a site with a visitor’s book and numerous tags and plaques left by parties passing through. There is also a blazed tree. The tree is not very big and the blaze is almost grown over. Here we found the plaque left by Lindsay Johnson (of Asquith and Johnson) on his trip back in 81. We left our names in the visitor’s book, took photos, read plaques left by others and climbed the dune nearby.







The country after this point was really nice. The track started to take some twists and turns with some tight corners, creek crossings (dry) and dune crossings. The trees got thicker and we were driving into more gidgee country. On top of the dunes though, all you could see forever was more sand, more dunes…really lonely, desolate country. The towing was not a particular problem at this point although with the tight twists in the track there was some shortening and lengthening of towrope as necessary which slowed things a bit.









Late afternoon while we waited for the Patrol and Defender to catch up we stood atop a dune looking for possible campsites and spotted a patch of thick looking gidgee ahead and decided to try for that spot for the night. We arrived at a claypan (marked on the map as a “small claypan”. Such descriptive landmarks!!) that had a sign tacked to a starpicket, pointing out the way to Peoppel Corner. The track from here was very distinct and easy to follow and in the right direction of travel so we went off over the dune, into the gidgee, and found the best of campsites for the night.







We broke out the last of the lumps of roast in the fridge, a lump of lamb, and had another very tasty meal around a blazing gidgee fire. The fellas in the Patrol and Defender, after concentrating all day towing and being towed, were totally knackered and the first into bed.



Not wanting to upset any Landie drivers I refuse to put in any pics of the Patrol towing the Landie. Truth is, I didn't really take many pics of that event anyway.



Numpty's Missus