It makes no sense whatsoever for the prime minister to appoint Ken Wyatt as the first Indigenous minister for Indigenous Australians, give him his head on a bipartisan approach to a referendum in a major speech at the National Press Club, then, within 48 hours, veto the one position about which those who devised the Uluru Statement from the Heart feel most strongly about – namely, a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament.
As I compiled the 12 posts on our Simpson Desert crossing photos from the other nine cameras drifted in. Those from Patsy and Don, however, arrived after the series was complete. Their collection contains some excellent landscapes I certainly would have used, had they been available. This selection tells the story of our crossing with links to the earlier posts in the headings. Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing: photos from Patsy and Don→
Len remembered a perfect camping place on Cooper’s Creek from a trip he’d taken with a friend a few years ago, so we eschewed the main camping area and headed down a side-track on the left. When we got there it just didn’t look right. We decided to walk through the bush along the river bank looking for the spot. After about 10 minutes we found it. Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 10: Cooper’s Creek to Emerald→
Birdsville has a permanent population of 115 and is the main centre within the Diamantina Shire with a population of some 322. After crossing Big Red and finding what passes for a road we travelled through some extremely desolate country: Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 8: Birdsville→
Big Red is the last and biggest of over 1100 sandhills you have to cross in a west-east crossing of the Simpson Desert. Standing some 34 metres above the plain it presents a considerable challenge. Here is what it looked like to us coming down the penultimate sandhill: Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 7: Big Red→
Mt Dare, Dalhousie Springs and Purni Bore are all in the Witjira National Park. Early on Day 2 we crossed into the Simpson Desert Regional Reserve, the main practical difference to us being that we could now have a camp fire. Within the first hour we came upon the man with his front wheel off I mentioned in this post: Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 3: Day 2→
It was a long day, our first day in the desert, with some severe landscapes and four bodies of water. Within the first hour we had our first technical hitch (see earlier post) where a tap on our largest water container turned itself on, watering the road with about 17 litres of water before we remedied the situation: Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 1: Mt Dare to Purni Bore→
Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff
