MONDAY

The mystery caravan that ran a generator and a satellite dish drove off and I am not sure if anyone was inside. Maybe it is an experimental holiday vehicle which does not have people inside?

We packed up slowly and poked off around the loop road by about 10am. The landscape is mostly softly rolling gibber hills with several rows of hills which decorate the horizon line. A stiff cool breeze blew all day as we checked out the remains of pastoral endeavour that struggled on over the past 100 years or so.

Around lunchtime we walked up Mount Wood a pretty little hill and got a splendid 360 degree view of an endless landscape. The earth colours broken by the soft grey greens makes a restful theme though this landscape is a hard master and only the toughest survive. The plants cling to a tenuous footing of thin clay soil that often fails at keeping the rocks and gibbers apart. Here and there the soil escapes the tyranny of the rocks to form small alluvial plains.

We arrived in Tibooburra about 3.30pm and caught up with the ranger. He was on for a chat. Eventually we refuelled and saw our first Sturt Desert Pea flowers on some red soil a short walk from the service station.

As the sun lowered in the sky it sucked the breeze to the west to cool his hot face. We put on jackets and beanies and ate tea at the picnic table under a moon which is visibly bigger each night. She looked at the sun setting with cool indifference.

TUESDAY

We were camped at the Dead Horse Campground, luckily the two dead horses that gave the campground its' name, have long stopped smelling. There is a track around through the large piles of granite which really stack up to be hills that are supposedly 400 million years old, and they look it.

Out here the landscape is such that it defies a short description and yet all the words in the world would fail to do it justice.

We walked around some old gold mining relics and mal promptly lost the eye cup off his camera amongst the 85 billion rocks that are scattered across the landscape. We looked but it remained lost. Later Mal crafted a replacement out of some stiff foam, superglue and silastic. Needless to say it looks very funny but works fine.

On the drive we stop at several dams and Sue is lucky to spend some time photographing a immature white headed stork who was fishing in a dam. He was very relaxed and having a good feed that he speared with his sharp beak. Lifting his head back to swallow and displaying a neck softly banded with darker feathers.

We drove North back into the jump-up hills which are so beautiful. They were splashed with slowly revealing cloud shadows. The warms yellows and off whites, greys, olive greens and deep reds popping when the clouds slowly allowed the sunlight to make the hills glow.

The road winds up the hills and we stop at the top to admire the escarpment from a different angle. These hills are not large and yet they stand out in this extremely flat landscape.

The campground is coarse red sand between the rather lush mulga next to a dry creek bed. We have a picnic table and we settle in. We decide to stay two nights as moving every day is just too hectic, the flies are ecstatic and come out to welcome us. They are very friendly and every fly wants to kiss us on the lips, the eyes and ears and climb up our noses and explore our ears.

Sue photographs two zebra finches up close with the late sun warming their fiery orange beaks. The light sparkles from their eyes, it is a terrific set of images. Her new camera is providing excellent results and she is so happy with all the new birds including a crimson chat - though not a stunning shot of that one - YET!!!!!

The sun sinks, the moon looks down and the night is quite still the wind having dropped away. We sit out in the evening and chat.

WEDNESDAY

No need to hurry, today is a rest day. Mal paints at the table, Alison writes up her diary, Bruce and Sue look for birds.

Around pack up time we hear rather animated or even heated conversation coming from the next campsite where a French couple in an Apollo landcrusier camper are conversing in French. After a while he drives over with the roof of his camper still sitting up high. They can't get it down. He has even tried standing on the roof and still it won't come down. Bruce and Mal get out their tools, identify the problem, replace a very worn pivot point, lubricate the mechanism and soon he is smiling and very grateful for the assistance. The landcrusier has had a hard life and hopefully does not have too many more trips to do before retirement.

Around smoko time in came a dozen land rovers (well there was one ring in landcrusier) with these expedition logos on their car doors. So Mal went and talked with Thomas who told him about their trip. They were all from the Sydney Landrover Club and were doing a re-enactment of the crossing of Australia from West to East by the Leyland Brothers - 50 years ago. They will end the trip at Byron Bay on the exact day, fifty years after the Leylands poured water from the Indian ocean into the Pacific. They asked Mal Leyland if he wanted to be involved which he declined for a number of unspecified reasons.

In the afternoon we do a 4km walk back to the escarpment. Mal wonders, why the early settlers were so greedy they had to steal this land from the local aborigines. The land is a sea of broken rocks that are as twisted and demented as those greedy invaders were. I doubt the aborigines out here had much energy to wage serious war on their fellow aborigines from a neighbouring tribe. On a diet of grasshoppers and low protein acacia seeds and the odd kangaroo steak - it must have been tiring work, baking hot in summer and damn cold in winter and pretty dry all the time. Really the English were a greedy lot of blighters in Mal's opinion.

Up at the lookout, Sue found some budgerigars having an afternoon nap. She was able to once again get quite close.

We had left the walk to later in the day and so it was after 5pm by the time we returned. Alision and Bruce turned up later and Bruce had a fantastic photo of a large lizard taking in the view from a mulga tree.

In the evening Andrew and Sara came over and we shared the bottle of wine given to us in appreciation for helping out the French couple. Andrew and Sara travel the world recording birds and other sounds as a business. They are both extremely good company and a lovely balance of sharing their own stories coupled with a genuine interest in the stories of others. In this case Bruce who had an interesting career as a TV camera man for ABC.

THURSDAY

We were into our second full day at the Olive Downs campground. It's funny as we Iook back on many days they are like a fruit salad - all mixed up and not sequential. Sue was in an out as she looked for pardalotes nesting and to see the nest of a Southern White Face, Andrew turned up now and then - Mal read, painted and chatted as the circumstance arose. Clouds filled the sky and eventually the sun went down. Andrew and Sara came over and eventually we all went to bed.

FRIDAY

Andrew and Bruce had been out recording birds and shared some of his recordings - so clear - clearer than if you stood there shuffling and making a noise and disturbing the birds. Fantastic recordings.

Mal wandered up the nearby rocky rise to photograph the full moon rising.

SATURDAY

We move off from Olive Downs.

Today we hope to make Cameron Corner, 100k West of where we are camped. We stop here and there. The day is windy and cool, though the sun is shining out of a sky not tarnished with a single cloud.

The landscape is soft rolling downs, the edge of the jump-ups mark the Southern horizon. Large roos are plentiful, though not in plague numbers. Some of the big male reds must stand 8 feet tall, though I wouldn't try and measure one, even if he looked like letting me.

We stopped at several dams with water where birds congregated and saw the remains of old windmills, stock yards and other traces of human activity. But this landscape is hard and even given it has been a good year, feed is relatively sparse and of unknown nutritional value.

The downs give way to sand dune country and we go up and down over dune after dune. Eventually we slide down a dune to the dog fence and here we are at the border. A bald headed man with a small dog alights from a large tour coach his heels shadowed by the very small lively dog. He wanders around and takes photographs, the dog races over to chew on a dead roo that is laying on the far side of the road, we don't hear the man call, but the dog runs back to his side. This happens several times as Mal waits for Sue who is photographing some hawks perched in a dead tree.

We stop at the gate and take some photos for our travel book. Then we cross the border, through the dog fence into South Australia. There is a small pub, The Corner Store - that sits in Queensland, with a NSW address and a South Australian phone number. The wall of the pub sports 3 clocks, because here you have Qld Time (we call this real time), then NSW day light saving time and of course South Australian time which is half an hour behind real time. They say the only time this is not a pain is on New Year's Eve when they get to celebrate the new year three times.

We run into Leo Baars from Toowoomba in his Kantabargo - which is a Mitsubishi Canta 4x4 truck with his own built on camper. Mal first met Leo in the early 1980"s when Leo poured two large concrete tanks on the property he and Wendy owned at Flagstone Creek Road. Mal was a postie then and that is how Leo remembers him.

We moved West through a landscape of sand dunes. Really we guess the Simpson Desert is going to be very much the same. Though the road here is a good gravel road spiced up with some corrugations installed to prevent fatigue and with a bonus full body massage to make the travel pleasurable.

We stop for lunch by a small depression which would hold water after rain and here some wild flowers were flourishing in soft crimson and pale green colourings. A very attractive scene.