The Simpson Desert Bike Challenge is an annual five-day race across Australia’s most iconic desert. The 500km race route traverses over 1000 sand dunes from Purni Bore in the west to Birdsville in the east following a scenic selection of tracks – the French Line, Rig Road, Knolls Track, WAA Line and QAA Line. Many ASCC members have competed in this race over the years – including Andrew Koop, Ron Slusser, Steve Brady and Kathy Moylan. I had initially planned to enter last year however the COVID pandemic put an end to that. The 2021 race was all set to go, but again it was cancelled just one month before the starting gun. With so much preparation already underway – including meals frozen, tyres bought (from Steve) and knobs trimmed (thanks Ron), extra jerry cans (thanks Mark), EPIRB (thanks Laurie), car awning, desert flag, and time off work we decided to ‘just do it anyway’. After a couple of interested teams from South Australia and my daughter pulled out, it was just Jason (support crew extraordinaire) and I.
After a dawn swim at Dalhousie Hot Springs we drove to the start point at Purni Bore. Even with a head wind and starting late on the first day I made good time, enjoying the amazing scenery and getting a feel for riding up and down the sand dunes. It felt great to be on the fat-bike again, with a great sense of excitement embarking on something new and potentially risky. Even though conditions were pretty good, we saw the Mt Dare recovery vehicle retrieving two cars in the first couple of days. This didn’t leave us with complete confidence, but we finished each day without issue and I was averaging over 15km/hour. In the race there is a sweep vehicle at 12km/hour and I wanted to be well within this time frame.
We found spectacular camps each night mostly in the swales protected by the sand dunes, and one night on the edge of a vast salt lake. In the middle of the desert the sand dunes were closer together and more irregular which made for super fun riding, curving around and up and over and down again. The dunes and swales got bigger and bigger the further east we travelled, until we reached the biggest dune, ‘Big Red’ (40m high)…which I almost rode up. Jason was pleased to drive up on the first attempt.
Our Pajero handled the sand easily, with low pressures. I got down to 2/3psi on the fat bike which made a huge difference riding up the dunes. The dunes become harder to ride in the heat of the day as the sand gets softer and I needed to let the air out as the temperatures rose. I had to get off and walk a number of times. My legs burned riding up, and then continued to burn coming down the other side as I needed to brace in attack position. Although the swales were often quite compact, they were often corrugated, making sure I couldn’t get any rest. Can you imagine repeating this 1000 times?! I haven’t been able to face riding up Anzac Hill since returning to Alice.
It was beautiful to ride in the morning after the wind had swept all the tyre tracks away, leaving only the rippling sand and animal tracks – evidence of the night time activity – beetles, lizards, hopping mice, camels and unfortunately much evidence of feral cat.
The weather was mostly kind, around 33 degrees with average wind, both with and against me, however one day reached 39C with a super-strong northerly headwind whipping the sand up – boy was I glad to be wearing mum’s glamourous hat, preventing the sand from filling up my ears. The sand is very fine and I was covered in it by the end of each day. We had wet wipes to wash, however after realising that we would have more than enough water, I enjoyed the luxury of a proper bush shower.
Finishing in Birdsville without fanfare was rather underwhelming after completing what felt like such a major achievement. Jason was there, along with a couple of tourists who cheered me. I felt extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to ride the entire length of the Simpson Desert in 4 1/2 days with wonderful support and laughs all the way. And very pleased knowing that my average times were well under the race cut-off. Hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to compete in the ‘real SDBC’…or perhaps it’s time to try a different race?!
