Day 3: Destination Dunes

Tuesday Day 3: Today we made it to our furthest destination. We went to the outskirts of windorah and saw the sand dunes. It wasn't complete sand everywhere like Simpson's national park further out west would be but their were still sand dunes and ever lasting desert. Simpson's national park was just too far away for our given amount of time and also their were forest fires; therefore, the park was closed and we would not have been able to get in. The sand dunes were gorgeous though. The pure red sand was amazing. It made the sand feel so much softer. Also the top surface was really warm but if you dug your hand down into the sand it was cold. And this was pretty much the main point of the whole trip was to see the red sand of the outback. You could also see tracks so clearly. It would be so easy to track an animal on sand. Not only because the tracks are clear, but also you know it is somewhat recent because the wind swipes any tracks clean within a day. I walked out into the desert plains to maybe see what it would be like walking out all alone into the desert. Next time I would hope to have sandals or shoes because the plants give off seed that is extremely thorny. So every few steps I would step into what looked like plain sand but underneath were little prickers that stuck to my feet and was like a bunch of splinters. After awhile though I got really good at determining what spots looked like they had seeds underneath and what didn't, kinda like a fun game except you get hurt if you fail. Ha anyway when I was walking out into the abyss I got a nice chill up my back because if I was stranded it would be so hard to find shelter and water. You would have to move from dune to dune as quickly as you can and hope that there is some kind of billabong near by that you can see. Billabong means oasis basically. It'd be quite the challenge.

After the dunes we headed back to windorah to check out the town and decide what we were going to do next. The playground they had in the town had a large scaled board for the game chutes and ladders. I really wanted to play but we didn't have a dice. How could the playground just have the game but no block to roll with it. Such a tease. In the information center they had a cool little museum and library. The museum just had a bunch of old things from the town and it's history and history of the outback. Some dead snakes in some jars too. I actually bought an interesting book for a $1. It's a fiction book about an african adventure so we'll see how good it is...When I get around to it. But deciding where to go next was probably the low point of the adventure because there were some disagreements. The majority was to go to a national park instead of go back and have a bonfire at a lake. I will speak for myself and say I'm glad we went to the national park because we got to see more of the outback and we still got to go to the lake. Besides I got to pick up my first hitchhiker. This one guy asked us if we were going to jundah which was right on the way. So we took him in. How nice of us. And on the drive their we drove through a forest fire. Very eerie feeling driving through there. Just black smoke all around some huge flames and burnt grass.

We ended up finding out that there was an octoberfest in jundah which is why the hitchhiker was going. The whole weekend people from all over the outback come to jundah to watch horse races and drink heavily. It would have been really fun to been apart of the outback octoberfest and meet people from all over the outback, but we had to be home by friday. So after we dropped the hitchhiker we took the outback dirt roads to the wilford national park. Once got there and set up camp I went for a nice long walk. I ended up finding a tree to climb and sat up watching all the different birds along the river. I must have been our for 3 hours just fascinated by everything different was in the outback. When I was walking back I spotted a kangaroo and came within about 30 feet from it before I snapped a twig and it hopped away before I could blink twice.