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Drops in an ocean of sand

SURREAL and disconcerting, the salt lake glistened in the afternoon glare. Later, under a full moon, the stark expanse was even more startling. Bathed in a dull silvery gleam, camel pads disappeared across the salt pan into the gloom.

The ethereal silence was broken suddenly by banshee howls. Dingoes - on the prowl for nocturnal pickings amid the dunes.

I was in the Simpson Desert, one of the world's great sand ridge deserts, covering 170,000 square kilometres of central Australia's arid heart.

For at least 5,000 years Aborigines lived in parts of it, their nomadic lives materially harsh but spiritually rich. The desert remained unknown to Europeans until the geologist Cecil Madigan crossed it by plane in 1929, and by camel a decade later.

Until the 60s and 70s, when petroleum explorers probed across the desert, the Simpson remained remote and inaccessible. However, the surveys left a legacy: a network of tracks which finally gave access to one of Australia's last frontiers.

Desert tourism has boomed since the mid-80s. Now, for travellers with a reliable four-wheel-drive vehicle, a transceiver, and some common sense, crossing the desert holds few perils - and for sheer exhilaration little compares with a desert crossing.

I crossed the Simpson recently with two companions, Cal Purkis, our driver, and Tiet Ho, a Vietnamese-Australian friend.

Our journey began at Oodnadatta. Our destination, Annandale, close to Birdsville, lay 400 km north-east as the crow flies, but some 1,000 km along the twisting desert tracks.

Travellers mostly cross the Simpson from west to east, as its ridges are more easily negotiated in that direction. Oodnadatta, located 800 kilometres north of Adelaide near the desert's south-western corner, is the ideal jumping off point.

Adam and Lynnie Plate's Pink Tuckerbox at Oodnadatta is a must. Always busy (''People say life here must be boring, but I never have time to think,'' says Lynnie), the Tuckerbox dispenses fuel, food, water, essential advice on current desert conditions -and mouth-watering Oodnaburgers! We stocked up on the essentials there, had a cuppa with ever-friendly Adam and Lynnie, then drove towards the desert's arid isolation.

North-east of Oodnadatta sand dunes spread from the desert's margins out on to the surrounding stony plains. Lynnie had told of an artist camped along our route, and, half a day from Oodnadatta, we found him. Tell-tale vehicle tracks across a sand ridge led to his camp, a mere speck in the immensity of space.

John Wolesley, an Englishman, has been painting central Australia for 16 years. Captivated by the wilderness around us, John expounded on the desert's appeal.

He pointed to some tracks: ''This sand dune may seem empty, but in fact it's a mass of life. For me these nocturnal tracks are a choreography, all these creatures' movements frozen in time.'' Parallel sand ridges marked the beginning of the Simpson Desert proper. Over 1,100 dunes, some up to 200 km long, run north-north-west to south-south-east across the desert.

The dunes in the western Simpson are only about 15 metres high, but 300 kilometres to the east the dunes are as high as 40 metres.

Two nights from Oodnadatta we camped at Purnie Bore. Disused Aboriginal wells still lie in the desert, but they are extremely difficult to locate. Purnie, by contrast, is an exploration well drilled in 1963.

Three decades of its mineral-rich, artesian water have created an artificial wetland between the low dunes. It is a magnet for water birds, and for travellers who wallow in its reed-fringed pools.

The desert's annual average rainfall is a mere 130 millimetres. Only the foolish expect to find any surface water east of Purnie: ''Six litres of water per person per day (provided the weather is mild) is the minimum to carry,'' our National Parks handbook warned.

Purnie provided our first, and only, desert 'bath'. ''A mugful of water a day each! That's all we can spare from now on for washing.'' Cal's weather-beaten grin masked his seriousness.

East of Purnie the two main tracks cross the desert, both clearly marked on tourist maps. The French Line, once a seismic ''shot-line'', runs east-north-east for 180 km, hammering directly across the sand ridges. The Rig Road, a better, clay-topped track, winds more gently for 380 km through the central desert. We took the latter.

''It is sand, sand, sand. No oases, no palms, no nothing - just sand!'' This 1944 description of the Simpson was largely accurate.

But fertility, not barrenness, is the predominant impression of the desert today. Unusually heavy rainfall between 1973-76 transformed the landscape, establishing a new cycle of shrubs and trees: Acacias, Hakeas and Grevilleas.

Spiky spinifex and canegrass grow thickly on the dune slopes and intervening swales. When we were there, recent showers had also carpeted much of the desert with wildflowers.

Some 180 species of birds flit or soar above the Simpson, 92 species of reptiles have been recorded, and 11 native and nine introduced mammal species live there - the latter partly accounting for the extinction of 11 other native mammals. A total speciescount of 292.

We saw countless birds, especially raptors and wheeling cockatoos. The evidence of other animals was everywhere: tracks, droppings and bleaching bones.

However, we sighted just three other species: dingoes and foxes lurking among the spinifex, and some feral camels. Shyer animals generally avoid the well-used vehicle tracks, and many of them are nocturnal.

Three camps beyond Purnie Bore, 200 kilometres further east, the Rig Road wound through the maze of salt lakes in the south-eastern desert. Ephemeral gems, the lakes fill following rare floods. Then, relentlessly, they evaporate to nothing.

The temperature plummeted below freezing the night we camped by the salt lake. Far above, jets whispered ''civilisation'' . . . But we slept well in our swags; more soundly, we guessed, than the travellers above us.

Beyond the salt lakes we headed towards the central desert and Poeppel Corner, the intersection of the borders of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory. Poeppel Corner lies 125 km south-east of the desert's geographical centre, and 163 kmwest of Birdsville.

We camped by some dunes riddled with warrens. ''Rabbits do far more damage to the desert's landscape than tourists, but even if we had unlimited funds we could never control rabbits with the methods available now,'' said Diana Papenfus, a National Parks ranger we met there.

''The Simpson's exciting and beautiful, like a many faceted jewel. Sand ridge upon sand ridge, clothed in glorious vegetation. But in five months the summer's heat will have withered everything.'' She captured the paradoxical extremes of the Simpson - and my own thoughts.

Annandale, our destination, now lay 170 km to the north-east. Our ten days in the Simpson were a mere moment in its cycles, my photographs barely a snapshot of its diversity.

A day beyond Poeppel Corner, pushing on towards Annandale, I recalled the grim privations of the explorer Charles Stuart. Passing the same way in September 1845, desperate for water, he was hemmed in by rust-red sand ridges - as we were.

We were exhilarated by our desert crossing. But Stuart, thirst-crazed, fearful that his party's retreat was cut off, wrote bitterly: ''In a country so dry all efforts are abortive; sandhills rising higher and higher, a creek from which it is vain to expect any water . . .'' Annandale was settled as a cattle station barely a generation after Stuart's expedition. It was abandoned just one generation later. Today a scatter of forlorn ruins speak poignantly of its settlers' dreams.

Nearby, a waterhole was a splash of darker green: one easily missed oasis amid an immensity of sand.

For information on Simpson Desert crossings, vehicle hire and guides contact the Simpson Desert experts: Adam and Lynnie Plate, the Pink Roadhouse, Oodnadatta, South Australia. Tel. 086-707822 Fax. 086-707831.

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