Desert Storm 1

When Charleen and I started our tour business crossing the Australian mainland from east to west, we imagined we'd be in for some dry times.  After all we were crossing the Simpson and Gibson Deserts and only working in the 'dry' seasons.

Our second tour taught us what to expect.  The locals around Birdsville way call September, the Month of the Winds.  They came early on 31 August 1995.

We had a glorious day, leaving Birdsville early, tackling Big Red successfully and crossing all the dunes without worries, we made good time.  We stopped by Poeppels Corner in the afternoon and set up camp about 5klm along the French Line.  It was a beautiful afternoon, we had set up the little nylon tents, started a fire and had the camp oven on with a roast cooking and watched a lovely sunset with a couple of drinks.

Just after the sun went down, I saw a fuzzy dark patch on the western horizon and casually mentioned it to the passengers.  One was a pilot and said that it was natural, "Just temperature inversion".

Five minutes later I looked up and saw the fuzzy patch was approaching fast over the dunes.  It looked to be doing 60kph or more and I called to everyone, "It looks like we have about 30 seconds to take cover."

Everyone took one look and dived into tents.  I grabbed a hammer and handful of tent pegs and was madly banging them in when we were hit with the storm.  Wind and sand hit us full force.  All the tents went flat and you could see the outlines of the occupants.  They had to put their heads between their bags and try to breathe.

I looked around at the fire and it was blasting ashes and sparks straight into our tent.  I hadn't had time to close it.  Grabbing a shovel, I raced over to help Charleen shovel sand onto the fire, covering our dinner in the process.  No time to think of that now.

There was lots of coughing and gasping coming from the tents.  The passengers were not doing so well.  One by one, we got them out and put them into the relative safety of the bus.  We figured the six tonne behemoth was going to be the last thing blown away.

So there we sat, It was now completely dark and the storm was hammering against the windows.  I had the interior lights on, played a music tape.  Two ladies (who should have known better) launched into a bottle of wine and soon got noisy.  There was little we could do, Just opening a door created havoc in the bus.

After a couple of agonizing hours there was a slight drop in the wind velocity and I had the idea to turn the bus so the door was downwind and the bus sheltered all that side.

Then I got out and battled my way around, found a table and set it up in the relatively calm side, got out the billy and set it up to boil.  It is a special one with the fire inside and it worked.  Charleen set up cups etc inside and we managed to serve a cuppa at least.  It was very welcome.

The wind died down to a roar and I got to thinking about our buried camp oven roast.  I made my way over there and dug the oven up, the coals were still warm.  I carried it around to the table and took a peek inside.  It was beautifully cooked!!!  Roast beef, potatoes and pumpkin.  So we managed to serve it up inside the bus.  It was a little cramped, but very tasty and the passengers were astounded at our resourcefulness.

By about 10pm, the storm had all but passed, so we all found our tents, popped them back up and crawled in.  Our tent, which never did get zipped up, had six inches of fine sand and dust covering everything, even the sleeping bags, but we were so tired we just flapped them out and lay down to a well earned sleep.