12-Jul-2006 -- Sitting around a campfire at the Louth picnic races back in August 2004, a friend suggested it would be great if we could make a trip incorporating the Boulia Camel Races, a trek across the Simpson Desert and ending up at Louth for the annual picnic races. So, it was planned for 2006. There was to be 4 weeks between the races at Boulia and the races at Louth, so plenty of time to do a nice long relaxing desert trip.

Just before setting out for this trip in July 2006, my brother suggested that I look at the Confluence Project website as he felt we must be going close to a number of confluence points along the way. And, so it seemed we were.

After a couple of days relaxing on Cooper Creek at Windorah, we set off for Diamantina Lakes National Park and a rendezvous with the first of our travelling companions. Along the way we travelled west along the Diamantina Developmental Rd, past the JC Hotel Ruins, the abandoned pastoral station ‘Waveney’, Mt Henderson (a small rocky hill with a hole through it, marked by a roadside sign with an arrow on it), past the road to ‘Palparara’ which we would take on our way out to Diamantina NP, and on past Round Mountain.

The countryside here is flat and generally devoid of vegetation. Gibber plains. Red gibber. The gibber seems to go one for ever and ever.

Once we hit the 141E line we stopped to take bearings. We travel with the GPS in the car hooked up to a PDA so we can see exactly where we are at any time on the map. With such flat land it was easy to simply drive as close as possible along the 141E line in a northerly direction. While the land looked very flat we had to negotiate a number of erosion washaways before leaving our vehicle (a brand new Land Rover Defender, only 3 weeks old when we left home on the trip) and finishing the journey on foot. On foot it was easier to pinpoint the Confluence Point. We made a small pile of stones on the point and took our photos, although there was not much to take pictures of at the site.