Dingoes wake us early in the morning. It’s warm, its very cloudy and fine rain can be seen in the west. We have a quick breakfast, clean the lights and mirrors as best we can and then move on towards Mt Dare hotel with the aim to fuel up.

We travel through undulating country, much of it looks like gibber plains dotted with jump ups. A quick stop at Opossum waterhole, a beautiful tree lined stretch of water. The track leads us up onto a jump up where we get a great view of the scenery. To suggest this land is devoid of life is a great example of ignorance, we can hear a chorus of birds in the creek line and at our feet is a grasshopper that looks like a gibber the same ground it sits upon.

We reach Mt Dare. Refuel and have a bite in the hotel. After spending a few days in the desert remote Mt Dare is a welcome touch of civilisation. Thank the young lady for her valuable local knowledge and advice. One should always stop at a fuel stop and for local knowledge.

We then head North on the Binns track. Travelling alongside the Finke River, it is lush and green, the big trees look very healthy. The track moves into the red coloured dune field of the Simpson desert travelling north along the swale. These swales give way to more gibber plains, on previous trips it looked like the surface of Mars now is an endless sea of grass.

We stop at Old Andado homestead, this is a great place to explore. When the owner Molly left this, her home, for the last time nothing changed in or outside the house, its a time capsule of a time now gone.

As we approach Santa Theresa, an indigenous community, the country becomes well timbered and vegetated. The landscape is just alive with thousands of birds, flocks upon flocks of Budgerigar, pigeons and finches.

We arrive in Alice Springs in the twilight, a long day but plenty of future sites identified to visit again in the future.