A few pics from the trip we did through the Simpson.

Great pics. Looks like there could have been some fun times out there !!

Cool Photos,

I wish I could have gone, but my Buggy wasn't ready.

Crossing the simpson in a buggy is definitely on my ToDo list.

I have created an Album in the buggy gallery for you to store more photos if you want.
http://www.manxgallery.org/gallery/Simpson2005 


[ Edited on 13 October 2005 by MikeM ]

Was a great trip. Five and a half thousand Km's in 2 weeks and a lot of that on dirt roads. Majority of the dirt roads are like highways so no big deal. The actual desert trip is not hard other than it is very remote and you have to put up with all the pot holes the 4*4's make.
It is amazing country out there. Well worth seeing.

Another pic.

Doing that is on my list....

It's defo on my list if things i'd like to do. Got to get a buggy first !!!

Fantastic...!!!!! Well done.....:thumb:thumb


Did you guys carry all your remote area fuel or did you get a fuel drop...???
I see you stopped at a servo, but I assume it took more than one tank of fuel to get there...??

We all carried extra fuel and water, all our camping gear and food etc. Basically everything you need to survive on your own for 3 or 4 nights in the bush. In the end we discovered we had plenty of everything, but you never know if you may have to stay longer.

If any of the buggies had had a terminal problem in the Desert, none of the other buggies had any capacity to carry more gear or another person, so it would mean having to camp until help arrived.

Thankfully this did not happen, so all was good. To give you an idea though, 2 of the buggies were SWB, 1300 boxes with standard 1776 motors - used around 70 litres from Mt Dare to Birdsville, with a round trip detour of 100 k's down to "The Lone Gum Tree". In total somewhere between 550 and 600 K's - I should work it out exactly actually.
The other 2 buggies where Sharpbuilt LWB, 1600 kombi boxes with 2 L Type 4 motors running duel carbies and enough gear for 2 people. I am not 100% sure but I think they used around the 90 to 100 L to get across the Desert.

The 2 major things I believe to make trips like this are successful 1) Prepare the car accordingly (not rocket science)
2) Be very conscious of how much weight you are taking. Just because it will fit does not mean you should take it. I took way to much food for the trip - more than twice what I needed. This added a lot more weight which I had to drag around everywhere.

It was a great trip and we all learnt lots about how to do trips like this again in the future.

Time to stop raving on......

[ Edited on 14-10-2005 by J&SBlue ]

Klub VW Offroad have a video available.

See here for details
http://www.klubvwoffroad.org/ 

*sigh* loving those pics... reminds me of the week i spent in the desert in 2002.

having fun getting all that red dust off your buggies?
glad to see you all had fun, and no hitches... would be so scary getting stuck out in the middle of this big brown land!

G'day,
Great pics. I guess you guys are aware that the first 2 way crossing by 2wd vehicles happended in 1972 when Arthur Hayward from Tassie led a group of 3 purpose built Buggies (from Tassie) and 1 Manx Buggy from Queensland, from Hamilton station, NE of Oodnadatta to Birdsville then turned around and drove back. They preety much had make their own tracks accross as the Simpson had not yet become a popular recreational trip.
Arthur was the designer and builder of the Holden Overlander 4x4 vehicles in the late 70s and took the Prototype Vehicle to Birdsville in '78 with 4 Bajas from Tassie to cross the Desert again, but trouble with one of the Bajas' gearbox at Big Red saw them abandon the trip and head back to Tassie.
There you are, a bit of trivia for you.
Cheers, Ian.

Thanks for that Ian. We were aware that someone had done the trip in the 70's in buggies. The trip would have been much harder for them than it was for us. There is a very defined track (and you are not suppose to go off it) through the desert. It is very bumpy, but not really much of a challenge for VW based off roaders.

Mark.