This is part 2 of the long drive north. The first part covered the drive from Sydney through to a bush camp outside Alice Springs. From here it gets wetter, then dirt: a flooded camp at Burt Plain, Barrow Creek and Wycliffe Well, Banka Banka, Daly Waters, and a closed road sign at Top Springs on the Buchanan Highway.
Before any of that, a word on why this series exists at all. The Oombi trip is an expensive one, and without Kilos backing this series it wouldn't be happening. I bought my first Kilos chair myself, well before any sponsorship. These days they support me with their chairs and the Rover Camp Light X, and they're now my preferred lightweight chair — they've replaced the Helinox for me. The Rover Camp Light X, their multifunctional telescopic camp light, got used every single day on this trip. I ran three of them, and the same chairs went to Kaelan as well.
Barrow Creek and Wycliffe Well
We went to bed under a clear sky and woke to rain hammering down at first light. By seven I was packing in, Kaelan too, because we were parked on a crack mire and I wasn't keen to find out how stuck we'd get. Ground was going soft fast, so we got out onto the highway while we still could.
Back on the bitumen the rain came and went. First stop was Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, one of twelve repeater stations on the Overland Telegraph line, opened by Charles Todd in August 1872. The stone walls around the buildings weren't decoration — the station was fortified after the killings there in 1873 and 1874, and a police post was added inside the complex. There's a small cemetery with three graves. The line shut down in 1935 once it stopped carrying international traffic.
Next was Wycliffe Well, named after a well sunk in 1875 but better known as the UFO capital of Australia. That reputation started in the late 1980s after a story in the local paper, and the site's owner spent the next 25 years and a few million dollars turning it into a full alien theme park, complete with a 300-seat restaurant. All finished now. A flood in 2022 forced the operators out, and the place has been vandalised and eaten by termites since — roadhouse, fuel bowser, restaurant, all dead.
We had a look at the Devils Marbles too. Nice, but it takes a while to read every "not allowed" sign — no climbing, no photography in places, no off-track even though it's all rock. I'd thought about camping there for the night, but it was blowing a gale and the site is fully exposed. We kept moving.
Tennant Creek
Fuelled up in Tennant Creek. The supermarket was open and we did a shop, but the rest of the town looked mostly boarded up. The old Telegraph Station was worth the stop, though — the cool house and cellar, the smoke house, a closed veranda to keep the flies out in summer, staff quarters locked up, and bedrooms with fireplaces, built-in wardrobes and solid rock slab floors.
While we were in range I tried one of the remote mobile phone boosters along this stretch. No signal without it, and even with the phone in the booster it didn't pick anything up this time — used to work, doesn't seem to anymore. Starlink and my own Wi-Fi kept us connected instead. I've used one of these boosters before, when my Defender broke down in Finke Gorge.
Banka Banka Station
We stayed the night at Banka Banka Station Tourist Park. Basic, but after a day of sitting a bit of walking does you good. Kaelan ran out to the waterhole and back, four kilometres all up, and I went for a swim the next morning at sunrise. Two kilometres in, two out.
The Detour to Daly Waters
We cut across the Buchanan Highway instead of running down through Katherine, which put Daly Waters on the route. The pub's been there since the 1930s, from the early days of aviation, and it's known for the ceiling — hats, banknotes, business cards and a few things I won't describe on camera, pinned up by travellers for decades. I'm in two minds about the place. It's still got its charm, the museum's worth a look, and the crocodile burger was good. The pool got a solid hour and a half out of us. But on a Saturday afternoon it felt less like an outback pub and more like a tourist park, vans lined up side by side like a little Legoland. We gave the caravan park a miss and pointed the Cruiser down the Buchanan toward Top Springs, hoping to find a bush camp before dark.
Tyres, Lights and New Shocks
Before dark I dropped tyre pressures, down to 29 psi from 36.9. I run tyre pressure monitors so they come off first — handy for exactly this. Once reset, the monitors picked up the new pressure and tyre temperature automatically. Worth having if you run low pressure at speed, since you can keep an eye on tyres overheating.
This was also the first real test of the corrugations with the new Superior three-way adjustable remote reservoir shocks, 2.5 inch. Solve Off Road did the install and some initial fine-tuning — they were a bit harsh to start, so I dialled them softer. On the corrugations they're driving well. A few washouts in as well, around 8,590 km on the Superior Engineering suspension, and it's handled everything so far. Early days, but nothing to complain about.
We just made it before full darkness, which is exactly why decent driving lights matter. Roof light bar, Lazer Sentinels with the yellow covers, and the Lazer 20-inch Glide Elite all running together by the time it was fully dark.
The Road to Timber Creek Is Closed
Then the sign: road to Timber Creek closed. That's the road we needed — the alternative is a long detour via Katherine. I asked around at the roadhouse and got nothing useful, but a local truck driver said if you're running 35s and a modified vehicle, you'd be fine, just rough. So that's the plan. Found a spot for the night and called it there.
All my navigation on trips like this runs through Memory-Map For All — it's what I use to work out what's actually rough versus what's actually closed, and to plan the detour if it doesn't stack up. Readers get a 10% discount through that link.
Top Springs Station in the morning, at the top end of Australia. I was in the Oztrail stretcher, one side open for light. Didn't matter — the material isn't taut and there's no provision for guy ropes to tie it down to the sides, so it flapped all night in the wind, loud enough to notice regardless of how well everything else was secured. I've had the older version of this stretcher for years and still have two or three of them, but the material's completely disintegrated now. I wouldn't buy it again.
Officially the road to Timber Creek is closed but supposedly drivable, they just haven't updated the signage. Grassy campsite, only one other vehicle around, nothing much happening. Clear sky and stars when we went to bed, overcast by morning.
Camp Kit Notes
A properly hot shower here too, bore or spring water by the feel of it, pressure like a fire hose.
We picked up a fair bit of bulldust with the ONTAP Roam uncovered. I could have taken the pump unit off and stored it in the car, but there wasn't space without it getting in the way of something else, so I threw a rubbish bag over it instead. Problem was my jerry can holder is tight, and wrestling the can in and out just to get the bag off wasn't worth the hassle. In the end I barely used the unit all trip — pulling the hose out for thirty seconds after lunch was more mucking around than it was worth, and most camps had some form of water anyway.
The ONTAP hard floor mat earned its keep, though. My usual blue mats are light enough to blow away and not solid enough to stop bindies working through. This one's heavier and more solid, fits in the gap in my pack-up, and doubles as insulation when the fridge is open at the back — not all the sun gets through, and it's where I get dressed each morning. Easy to clean even caked in mud. That one's staying in the kit.
Next episode: the closed stretch of the Buchanan Highway from Top Springs to Timber Creek, our first croc, a scrub bull visit in the middle of the night, and a camp at Jasper Gorge.
If you're planning your own run through this country, the Simpson Desert 4WD Travel Guide covers a lot more than the Simpson itself — vehicle prep, tyre pressures, water and fuel planning, navigation and general remote-travel judgement calls that apply just as much to the Buchanan Highway or the Oombi as they do out on the Simpson tracks. Worth a look if you're heading bush.
