FRENCH LINE SITE MAP

The Simpson Desert FRENCH LINE site can be accessed entirely from this page.  It is arranged in five books or 'digests' that are reached initially upon entry to the home page and each of these books has five major components or 'articles' making up the bulk of the text.   Some articles have been retired to mothballs and links to these can be found at the bottom of the page.

Links to the French Line home page can be created easily on your own home page.   First click on the CGG logo below and then copy and paste the images of your choice.   The editor, Kevin JR Murphy, can be contacted readily by email and generally responds within a short time.
The Editor of the French Line site Kevin Murphy, taken circa 1990. Photo by Kevin Murphy (kjrm1963.jpg). Click on the photo for an enlargement.
KEVIN MURPHY
SITE EDITOR
CIRCA 1990

DESERT DIGEST

Cashbook and Claypan
Share in the tribulations of the admin manager as he balances the books from his Office-in-a-Blitz

Birdsville or Bust
Learn how French know-how and Australian muscle carved the French Line through the Simpson

East From Oodna
Marvel at the initiative of the early pathfinders who solved the mysteries of the Red Centre

Alive in the Dead Heart
Recollections from the crew who first burst the road through Australia's One True Desert

B-line for Birdsville
Join the CGG veterans on their return journeys to the French Line. Take their tip and travel with experts

(Under Construction)

Index to French Line Photo Gallery
FRENCH LINE
PHOTO GALLERY

Pages Since Last Modified
Free JavaScript provided
by The JavaScript Source

Simpson Desert French Line

SITE MAP

Crossing the Simpson Desert from the western side, via Dalhousie. Start your journey by browsing through these pages. Take the time to load and enjoy the historic photos. Click on the caption. Reg Sprigg was the first person to successfully cross the Simpson Desert by motor vehicle when he drove across in 1962 with his family. Reg was also the force behind the oil search among the dunes that began less than a year later. The French Line built by the first oilmen became the gateway for all Simpson crossings and is still in use today. Check out Australia's 'One True Desert' site, the Simpson and its amazing access road, the French Line - the country's toughest 4WD challenge and last remaining frontier pathway. Click on the caption beneath to return to the gateway Crossing the Simpson Desert from the eastern side, via Birdsville. Start your journey by browsing through these pages. Take the time to load and enjoy the historic photos. Click on the caption.
Starting Out
From
Dalhousie 		 French Line
Beginnings 		 Starting Out
From
Birdsville 

DIGESTS

For the most ambitious and daunting prospect in Australian onshore seismic exploration yet attempted, French Petroleum chose Compagnie Generale de Geophysique (CGG) to break through and conduct the geophysical survey of the Simpson Desert. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Birdsville is Australia's last remaining frontier town, straddled at the head of the famed Birdsville Track and the eastern gateway to the enigmatic Simpson Desert. Marooned by floodwaters for up to three months every year, the people of the tiny Channel Country outpost have long been reliant on air transport to get supplies through. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Camelback explorers David Lindsay (1886), Edmund Colson (1936) and Cecil Madigan (1939) all chose to begin their confrontation with the Simpson Desert from the western side, as did the first man game to attack the desert by motor vehicle, Reg Sprigg, who headed east and gallivanted through with his family in 1962. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. The French Line began as CGG Party S6507's bulldozed 'Line B' at Dalhousie Springs in South Australia on July 1st 1963 and ended at Poeppels Corner at the tri-State border two months later. In another month they had reached Eyre Creek. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Join the CGG veterans on their return journeys to the French Line. Take their tip and travel with experts. Under Construction.
Cashbook and
Claypan 		 Birdsville
or Bust 		 East from
Oodna 		 Alive in the
Dead Heart 		 B-Line for
Birdsville 

ARTICLES

Meet the oilworkers who challenged the Simpson Desert, carving their 440km access road now known as the French Line. Join with them as they bulldozed their desert path to nowhere. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. As the South Australian-based farming pioneers ventured north from Marree in the 1880s seeking new pastoral holdings, their enterprise led them well into Queensland Channel Country. The path they took along the Kallakoopah floodplain became the famous supply line known as the 'Birdsville Track', eventually linking Adelaide and Birdsville. Click on the caption to go directly to the story The Leyland Brothers Mike and Mal are well-known to Australians per medium of their entertaining adventures - wandering purposefully as a small family unit around the country, their travels shown on national television and distributed widely on film over four decades. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Settlement of Australia by Europeans started in January 1788 and even before the newcomers spread out around the country they began farming in the European manner. These first farmers and graziers brought with them domestic stock including sheep, cattle, poultry, pigs, deer and goats for food, cats and dogs for companions and bullocks, horses, camels and donkeys as carriers. Rabbits, carp and foxes were to follow for sport. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Vic Rules OK is under construction
Simpson Desert
Office 		 Birdsville Track
Mailmen 		 Leylands' Tough
Simpson Desert Sector 		 Four-footed
Ferals 		 Vic Rules
OK 
The French Line across the Simpson Desert was completed in September 1963 and no one in the Compagnie Generale de Geophysique (CGG) construction team could have envisaged the volume of traffic that would flow across in their wheeltracks over the years since. The notion that their road would open up other less arduous routes in several directions as well, was quite preposterous for the CGG originals to contemplate. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Police Sergeant Eric Sammon was the 'Lord of the Lockup' in the outback Queensland border town of Birdsville in the nineteen sixties. Sgt Sammon ran a one-man police station and his word was law in the second largest police district in Queensland. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Jaroslav Pecanek quickly built an outback empire when he owned every business in Oodnadatta except for the Transcontinental Hotel. In February of 1963 the first of the French oilmen began reconnoitering the area around Oodnadatta in order to plan the coming winter assault on the Simpson Desert. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. It is everyone's expectation that a desert should have an oasis and the Simpson, Australia's One True Desert, doesn't disappoint for it has two oases. On one side can be found unlimited water from a bottomless ancient stream fed by the Finke that is Dalhousie and on the other side travellers can be forgiven for thinking the oasis that is the Birdsville Pub has unlimited supplies of beer. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Local traders is under construction/
French Line
Pioneers 		 Lord of the
Lockup 		 The Pecaneks
of Oodna 		 The Birdsville
Pub 		 Local
Traders 
During July and August of 1966 the Leyland Bros Mike and Mal reportedly came upon a hive of activity on the western rim of the Simpson that had been overlooked by their researchers when the big sponsorship dollars were being called in to fund their first major filming adventure across Australia, 'Wheels Across a Wilderness'. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Old Mintulee (Joe the Rainmaker) of Thurrabarree became a Birdsville resident in 1899 when he and the remnants of his Wangkangurru horde emerged for the last time from their home patch of the southern Simpson Desert and made camp by the Diamantina River within sight of the township of Birdsville. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. All of the borders between the five mainland Australian States had been surveyed by the time of Federation of the Commonwealth in 1901 except one daunting section of the South Australian border with the Northern Territory. Not surprisingly, it was the survey through the central Simpson Desert that had been neglected for so long. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. The enigmatic Simpson Desert is at once Gregory's 'Dead Heart', Finlayson's 'Red Centre', Barry Paine's 'Green Centre', Clune's 'Red Heart' and then Madigan's 'One True Desert' while George Farwell dubbed the region the 'Land of Mirage'. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. 35th Anniversary is under construction.
Historical
Crossings 		 Joe the
Rainmaker 		 The Wright
Partners 		 What's the
French Line
Really Like? 		 35th Anniversary
Crossing 
Australia's Simpson Desert is the driest region in the country and everyone would expect water to be its scarcest resource. However, while it is said that rain falls in the region only when storms get lost, paradoxically the desert itself is blessed with a large permanent water supply on either side. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Pioneering bush pilots, encouraged by the exploits of famed Australian aviators Charles Kingsford-Smith, Bert Hinkler and others, began reaching out to service pastoral properties and mining crews as outback airstrips were laid down and commenced to dot the countryside in the 1930s. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. The Compagnie Generale de Geophysique (CGG) old hands who built the French Line regard Arkaroola as the key element in their hugely disparate 'trinity' of Arkaroola, Dalhousie and Birdsville and there is a strong Sprigg connection with all three locations. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. The old frontier town of Birdsville in southwest Queensland supported a permanent population of many thousands of people in the days before Federation in 1901 when Birdsville was a major transit stop for smugglers. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Back Again in 2003 is under construction.
Desert Water
Sports 		 Pilots of the
Simpson 		 A Geologist
Strikes Back 		 Capital of the
Channel Country 		 Back Again
in 2003 

Cattle stations on both sides of Australia's Simpson Desert have long enjoyed reputations as the premier cattle-fattening properties in the land and stock is trucked great distances to take advantage of even short periods of agistment when market conditions are favourable. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. The Birdsville Track to Marree is one of Australia's three most-travelled droving routes, with ten cattle stations spread along its 300m length. Anyone careless enough to stray off it just 200 yards or take a wrong turn like the English migrant Page family who lost their way in 1963, invites a dice with disaster. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Evidence gathers that the South Australian Surveyor-General Augustus Poeppel deliberately covered up his error of declination in 1879 when surveying the point where three States meet that is now known as Poeppels Corner. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. How to Survive More Than Three Months in Australia's Simpson Desert - Bring Your Living Quarters With You. Forty-five intrepid seismic workers lived and worked along the length of the French Line as they extended their road, from mobile homes drawn from one campsite to the next by ex-Army Blitzwagons. Click on the caption to go directly to the story. Other Tagalongs and Tours is under construction.
Fat Cattle
Country 		 Page Family
Perish 		 Poeppel Stretches
Belief 		 Mobile Homes of
the Simpson 		 Tagalongs
and Tours 
Coles Express Picks on a Pensioner .....
Try the  "with Malice a'Forecourt?"  link and read what they did
GONE TO MOTHBALLS .....
Thommo's Desert Report The BeeGees Page
Coles Express Picks On a Pensioner The Kid From Towra Point
Bulldozing a Desert Trans National Causeway
Signwriter for the Simpson The Long Haul
Simpson Desert Birdlife French Line Circa 1979

HOME - CGG Living Quarters, 1963
RETURN TO FRONT PAGE
CGG Party S6507 - The Simpson Desert French Line Construction Team. Click on the CGG image to access the linking instructions page
CREATE A LINK
Email the Editor
EMAIL THE EDITOR