After our Silo Art Trail explore around the Mallee district, we set our destination to Big Desert – Wyperfeld National Park – Murray Sunset National Park. 3 days of camping and 4 wheel driving in the desert! We got our fly net on, GPS loaded, and meet the rest of the group on day 1 at Western Lake Campground.
Big Desert Day 1 – Western Lake Campground to Snow Drift Campground
Gaia GPS tracking
We were a little lost on day one. Might have went through some provate farm land with gates to get to Wonga Campground.
Snow Drift Campground is known for its big sandy hill. Correct me if I’m wrong but I heard the hill used to be “open” for 4WD. But now it’s gated. The boys still had a good time running and sliding down it before sunsets. J and I were the only ones camping while others headed back to their motel in Sea Lake. So we aired up the other bloke’s tyres to 30psi since the road wasn’t too soft.
Big Desert Day 2 – Pink lake, Border Track, Big Billy Bore Campground
Day 2 Gaia tracking
Packed up our gear and hit the road. We were supposed to explore on our own from now on. But during a rest stop in Underbool, we caught the boys on the radio. Turns out we were headed to the same place – Lake Crosbie.
This is an almost dried-out lakebed appearing to be pink.
The whole Australia used to be under sea level before the ice age.
As ocean level drops, the land we now call Australia showed up but this also caused a large volume of saltwater trapped in sand, The Mallee area lucky got a huge deposit.
This saltwater rises in winter and evaporates in the summer, over thousands of years, leaving a thick layer of salt.
And the pink color comes from a single-celled alga living in this environment.
We said bye to the rest of the crew after this, and continue heading West. Eventually, we reached Border Track – the tight trail that runs in the middle of South Australia and Victoria.
Border track was a little underwhelming with tight tracks and not much to see. It’s just a geographical separator.
J called me on the radio and we decide to take a left on the next split to get onto highway B57. Back to the pavement so we can get back to Big Desert faster.
However, this put us in South Australia side for a while before turning back to Murrayville.
There was a half-hour time difference between the two-states. confusing huh.
We settled the night at Big Billy Bore Campsite.
Day 3 – Milmed Rock Track
Gaia Tracking
Daily morning teamwork – rolling up the ARB swag and strap it on to the roof of my Landcruiser. We kept the sleeping bags and pillow inside the swag so it gets a little harder to roll up. Bit more bulky and heavy but whatever saves time so we can hit the road sooner.
At that time we weren’t aware of the built-in tie-down straps on this ARB cargo bag so we were using extra ratchet straps. I explained in one of my recent videos how the straps work so go check that out.
See, we’re all learning.
Keep driving South along Murrryville-Nhill Road, soon we hit the sign to turn into Wyperfeld National Park. From here, we officially enters the desert sand driving area on Milmed Rock Track.
This desert was quite different than what I imagined – I pictured a endless sandune with no life in sight kind of scene. However, this desert is quite well vegetated which makes it easy to stay on track.
Milmed Rock is located right about middle of the track. There is a visitor’s box for leaving random things and notes. Someone left a can of baked beans. Who know maybe this will save someone’s life one day.
Not sure if it’s wilde flower season but these Fleshy Groundsel painted the whole ground to bright yellow! What a desert scene.
We saw so many bobtails in Big Desert area. They are a little shy but not harmful. I wonder if some subspecies of this are brought to homes as pet “blue tongue”.