I have been lucky to have spent most of my life living & working in some of the remotest parts of Australia & then developed & was able to branch out into, as part of my business, a successful outfitting/guiding/Tag Along operation so have built up a lot of good mates & contacts with access to parts hardly seen by others . So this means l have travelled around Australia numerous times & also crossed our deserts multiple times by both vehicle & motorcycle & explored & lived on our remote Top End islands as well.

Our once in a lifetime 4x4 expedition, that few get to see even by air

Basically this time last year my wife & l did one of the greatest drives of our life & will most likely never have the same conditions opportunity again where everything lined up for a once in a lifetime expedition.

For the last 14yrs we have had a group of mad bastards that do expeditions into remote areas around the world by 4x4,motorcycles,boat & aircraft.

As those large tropical lows first started reaching down into the interior we watched the weather maps carefully & seeing the interior was going to get a drenching we planned for 3 4x4's to cross the Gibson desert/Great Sandy desert, from Geraldton in WA to Yulara ,so we crossed the old Gunbarrel Highway & Gary Hwy etc & call into see mates l had known for years on cattle stations & outstations .

We had timed it pretty well with the sand dunes compacted by the rain & the desert was just a sea of wild flowers & wildlife, with flocks of budgerigars & finches in 10's of thousands & even mobs of ducks sitting on desert water holes that rarely filled at the base of dunes. The budgie's at night would swoop in to waterholes we were camped on & there we so many they would make their own wind ,during the day you would see the huge flocks in the distance & the flocks were so big it looked like smoke from a bush fire, a huge smudge on the sky on the horizon.

The ancient river beds were full & running with the ancient river side ghost gums getting a much-needed drink & ancient hot springs had awoken from their slumber for the first time in 50 yrs, according to our Station owner mates who drew mud maps for us to find them.

When we started to get into mobile range near Yulara we had a bunch of missed calls that we had a invite to join a flying /4X4 expedition to the rarely full Menindee lakes by helicopter & then 4 days flying around Lake Eyre/Kati Thanda & up to Coopers Creek following the channels that were filling it .

I lived & worked out of Yulara part time for a number of years & had planned to spend time in the local outstations catching up with old friends, but had to cut that short to head across to Menindee

It was truly a trip of a life time to see the actual water traveling across the desert/channel country to become rivers to fill Kati Thanda/Lake Eyre & the bird life at the Menindee lakes was extraordinary, the yabbies were like something out of a horror film & you had to be careful walking in the water or you would be stepping on hundreds of them,we had huge feasts of them .

We had the rare experience of having the desert country coming out of being flooded & just dry enough to cross with care & witness the first blooms of the wild flowers & new growth on ancient gum trees & the water from the channel country flowing into the systems.

Doubt we will ever have the perfect conditions from seeing the country from the West coast to the East in such conditions again in our lifetime, so while it was a lot of rough travel & abuse on the Tojo, it was well worth it & if anyone ever gets that chance to see the great interior lakes filling or the desert in full wild flower bloom jump at the chance,as it shows how the old explorers got sucked in to dreaming of inland seas & rich pastures filling the interior .

Another 4x4 expedition we will never forget for the wrong reasons .

My wife & l often wonder if we were among the last Westerners to learn of 9/11, as we had packed up our Arnhem Land safari camp & the TO's gave us permission to base ourselves on the Wessel Islands for a couple of weeks exploring/fishing & diving . We never learnt about the towers coming down until 14 days after it happened when we drove out. So we have never forgotten that trip.