Despite being one of the last to leave camp in the morning we were off by 9am heading toward Windorah. We were met with a ‘Sold Out’ sign on the first fuel pump we came across but after a short queue we managed to find a pump and a friendly face to get the tank filled.

While we were in town we stocked up on some groceries and an overpriced leopard print sun hat for Miss7 as I’d left our sun hats at home (they’re hibernating in the cold in Melbourne). Travelling with vegans is easy on your meat supply but I’m not sure I stocked enough fresh veggies to cope so buying them now was an expensive exercise! Back on the road and despite Google maps telling me today’s drive would take 13 hours (!!) we managed it in around 6 with a few stops on the way.

One of the stops along the way was at a drop loo where some fellow travellers quickly warned us off using the loo for the smell. According to them they were the worst loos in Australia – they’d clearly never used the loos at Mt Connor or Kata Tjuta!

When I stopped at the start of the gravel road to let some air out of the tyres a local cop pulled up to check I was ok and told me not to bother with the air. I assumed that advice came with a guarantee that if I blew a tyre, he’d come and help me change it and I hit the gravel ready for the bumpy next stage of driving. I’d forgotten how rough this road was – with all the traffic heading to Birdsville there was a lot of dust but the new car handled it all easily.

Once we hit town in Birdsville and refuelled I got mum to run into the caravan park on the off chance they’d have a site. When I’d called to book several weeks ago there was a 7 day minimum stay on powered sites or 3 days unpowered so I’d opted for free camping on the common. As mum arrived the lady in front of her was cancelling her powered site to opt instead for a cabin – she was already sick of camping so we scored her site for the night.

After setting up we put a load of washing on and enjoyed a nice hot shower before making our way to the pub for a meal and a pot of beer. The whole town was packed – much busier than our last visit in 2015 and the pub had smorgasbord meals on offer to help feed the hundreds of people there that night. The food was delicious and the beer lovely so I had a second pot before we headed back to camp ready for the drive out to Big Red tomorrow for our three days of fun at the Big Red Bash.