Marianna Waterhole on the Cordillo Downs Track to Coongie Lakes

From Birdsville we took the Cordillo Downs Road again and camped en route at lovely Marianna Waterhole. Surprisingly, after our very rough experience merely 8 days previously, the dangerous bogholes had all been bulldozed, excavated and since dried, so all good travelling. 

Birds were seen in abundance, along with a wild cat first spotted at night with its red eyes shining in our torchlight.

We turned off, just outside Innamincka with its unwelcoming vibes, to Coongie Lakes a splendid Ramsar site and wetlands including a mosaic of lakes, channels, billabongs, deltas, inter-dune swamps. The drive is superb. Soft, velvety, sand tracks with swaying grasses down the middle, snaking up and down dunes across floodplains dotted with trees, then winding along the lakeside fringes with birds and desert creature tracks aplenty.

We camped right by the water edge and witnessed countless birds and fiery sunrises.

Black-tailed native hens scurried like pensioners in flocks at the supermarket pecking for bargains on the lakeshore.

Truly heart warming was the dingo pack howling to herald the dawn.

=====================================================================

Marianna Waterhole, Cordillo Downs Track, Simpson Desert, Coongie Lakes, South Australia