The Flinders to the Gulf: doing the Oodnadatta and Birdsville properly in one lap

Marree Roadhouse at 7am, diesel bowser queue three deep, and every second rig in that queue is trying to decide the same thing I was fifteen years ago wrenching for a mob doing the same trip: Oodnadatta or Birdsville first, and can you actually do both without doubling back to Port Augusta. Short answer, yes. Long answer is the rest of this article.

I've towed and driven support vehicles through this country more times than I've bothered counting, mostly fixing other people's rigs at Mungerannie or Marree when the corrugations found the weak point in their cooling fan wiring or their shockers gave up. The loop through the Flinders Ranges linking both tracks is one of the best pieces of outback touring in the country, and it doesn't need a French Line-grade rig to do it. It needs a properly set up van, a plan for fuel and water, and someone who reads the road reports instead of just the Facebook groups.

Why link them instead of picking one

Most tourers do the Birdsville Track as a there-and-back from Marree, or bolt the Oodnadatta onto a Red Centre run and never go near the Birdsville turnoff. Fair enough if that's all the time you've got. But the two tracks share a start point at Marree, and if you route through the Flinders Ranges first, you end up with a loop rather than a straight line, which means you're not driving the same 200km of gibber twice.

The rough shape is: Flinders Ranges (Wilpena Pound area) up through Blinman and Parachilna, across to Marree, then a choice — Oodnadatta Track west to Oodnadatta and on to Coober Pedy or the Stuart Highway, or Birdsville Track north to Birdsville and the Diamantina/Qld side. Do both in one trip and you've covered close to 1,500km of unsealed and semi-sealed outback road, camped at three or four genuinely different landscapes, and used one tank of fuel per leg if you're sensible about range.

Wilpena to Marree: the warm-up leg

I'll be blunt about Wilpena Pound campground — it's not remote camping, it's a proper caravan park inside a national park, and that's exactly the point before you head north. Fill water tanks here, not at Marree. The Flinders Ranges leg through Blinman and up to Parachilna Gorge is sealed or well-maintained gravel most of the way, good for shaking down the van, checking wheel bearing temps after the first hour, and making sure nothing's worked loose before the real corrugations start.

From Parachilna it's the Oodnadatta-bound route or the Strzelecki route north, but for this loop you want to angle towards Marree via Lyndhurst. That stretch is where I've seen the most avoidable failures — people towing at highway pressures over dirt that's been washboarded by road trains, and their fridge compressor mounts or gas strut brackets are toast by Marree. If you haven't read it already, our piece on tyre deflation for sand and corrugations covers the pressures I actually drop to on this kind of road, and it matters more here than people expect for a "graded" track.

Marree: the decision point

Marree Hotel has the fuel, the pub meals, and the last reliable phone signal you'll see for a while depending on your carrier. This is where the loop splits. My advice, having done both directions more than once: run the Oodnadatta Track first while you're fresh and your water tanks are full, then come back to Marree and do the Birdsville Track as the second leg, restocking fuel and water at Marree in between. Don't try to carry enough for both tracks without topping up — the fuel range sums don't work for most vans towing a decent-sized caravan, and Marree's bowsers exist for exactly this reason.

The Oodnadatta side takes you past Lake Eyre South, William Creek (population somewhere in single figures, and worth the detour to the pub regardless), and on to the Pink Roadhouse at Oodnadatta itself, which has been the unofficial information centre for this track for decades. Road conditions change fast out here after rain — check the Department for Infrastructure and Transport's road condition reports before you commit, not the week before.

The Birdsville leg: what actually breaks

Twenty years fixing rigs taught me the Birdsville Track punishes different things than the Oodnadatta. It's the corrugations near Mungerannie and the sandy sections north of that where shock absorbers cook themselves and where I've pulled more than one caravan chassis crack open at the drawbar weld. If your van's had any payload creep since you bought it — and most have, see our article on that if you haven't checked your actual loaded weight lately — this is where it shows up as a snapped spring hanger rather than a number on a docket.

Mungerannie Hotel is the only fuel and water stop between Marree and Birdsville, roughly the halfway mark. Don't skip topping up there even if your tanks look fine; the last stretch into Birdsville has caught out plenty of people who did the maths on paper and not on the actual gauge. Birdsville Caravan Park is a decent base to recover, do a proper once-over on the van, and decide whether you're pushing on to the Simpson or turning back south.

I'll say something that'll annoy a few people: I think too many tourers treat the Birdsville Track as a box-ticking exercise on the way to the Simpson Desert crossing, and rush it. It's a good track in its own right, with the Cooper Creek country and the Sturt Stony Desert doing plenty on their own without needing the French Line as the payoff.

Water and fuel numbers that actually matter

I'm not going to give you a single number because van weights and consumption vary too much to be useful, but here's the method. Work out your worst-case fuel consumption towing on dirt (add 30-40% to your sealed-road figure, not 10%), then calculate range to the next confirmed bowser with a 25% buffer, not 10%. Marree to Birdsville via Mungerannie is roughly 520km one way; Marree to Oodnadatta is roughly 210km. Both are doable on a single tank for most rigs with jerry cans as backup, but the buffer is what saves you when a headwind or soft sand adds 15% to your fuel burn without warning.

Water is the same logic, but people get it wrong the other direction — they carry way more than they need because they're thinking Simpson Desert numbers for a track that has two reliable roadhouses on it. If you've read our piece on water tanks vs jerry cans, the case for extra jerry cans is weaker here than it is on the genuinely remote crossings; a well-maintained onboard tank and topping up at Marree and Mungerannie covers most vans comfortably.

When to go, and when not to

April through September, same as most of outback South Australia and southwest Queensland. Summer heat on these tracks isn't just uncomfortable, it's a real risk to your cooling system and your tyres, and I've recovered rigs in January that had no business being out there in 45-degree heat. Check current road conditions before you leave, because both tracks close after rain and stay closed until they're graded, sometimes for a couple of weeks. The Birdsville Track in particular crosses country that floods and takes time to drain.

If you're building this into a bigger trip, it sits naturally alongside a run through the Mid North of South Australia on your way up, or as a detour off a broader Red Centre itinerary if you're happy to backtrack to the Stuart Highway from Oodnadatta.

What I'd actually pack differently

Beyond the standard recovery kit — and I've written before about what actually earns its place in that kit rather than what just adds weight — I'd make sure you've got a spare wheel bearing kit and the tools to fit it, because that's the failure I see most often on this exact loop. Spring shackle bolts and U-bolts are the other one; carry spares if your van's old enough that they've never been replaced. None of this is exotic gear. It's the boring stuff that actually gets used.

Most people who do this loop come back saying the Birdsville side was harder on the rig and the Oodnadatta side was better scenery, or the reverse, depending on conditions the week they went through. Both are true often enough that I won't pick a favourite. Do the loop, top up at Marree in the middle, and don't rush either track just to say you've done it.