ROADBOSS heads to a remote part of South Australia to document the incredible logistical effort involved in transporting livestock trucks across a flood-ravaged section of the Birdsville Track
Some 125km from Maree up the Birdsville Track is a rest area. Like the landscape all around, it’s just a flat and featureless patch of dirt half the size of a footy field. No table, no roof, no dunny.
In the middle sits an old dinghy atop a knee-high pedestal. Surrounding it on two-and-a-half sides are the remnants of a rotting fence. The faded name on the sides reads M.V. Tom Brennan. According to the plaque this little vessel was presented to settlers north of the Cooper in 1949 to ferry people, mail and supplies and to help drovers move cattle across flood waters. It was restored and put on display by the Highways Department of South Australia in 1986. Now full of rusty holes and in need of another revival, it’s lived here ever since.
This part of the track is closed. There’s currently a substantial ‘flood event’ in progress. Not even a kilometre ahead there’s another barrier across the road. Almost beyond arm’s length the track gently fades into a mangrove-like scape where low rising bush wades in the grey waters. Only the deep ruts emerging from the water’s edge like claw marks can explain how treacherous this surface can be when wet.
This part of Birdsville has been under water since June. I turn around and take the detour to the barge.
Twenty kilometres further, over a faint rise barely more pronounced than the earth’s arc, I see structures. It’s just gone half-one and the sun’s straight up. There’s someone in a high-vis shirt taking refuge in the shade of a demountable.
From where I’m standing it looks more like a healthy river, two-hundred-metres wide, than a ‘creek’.
Just on the other side of his Fuso there are more boxy barracks. The generator’s rumbling. I ask if there’s anyone in the office. “I think they’re on their lunch break. There’s two fellas down there by the ferry if you want to cross,” the bloke points at the haze just up the track.
I make my way to the two trucks in the near distance. Both Western Stars are branded ‘Booth Livestock’. And both are towing empty cattle trailers. Beyond them I finally get a glimpse of Cooper Creek itself. From where I’m standing it looks more like a healthy river, two-hundred-metres wide, than a ‘creek’.
Phillip and Dan are on their way north to pick up more livestock from Cowarie Station. With his scruffy hair and leathery hands Phillip is the Booth that owns the company. Son Jarrod and his Western Star are on their way across as we speak. And driver Dan, the 34-year-old with ‘80s movie star looks, is a true Tom Selleck doppelgänger. They all hail from Lyndhurst in the Flinders Ranges. They squeeze both onto Margaret side by side – so close there’s no room to move in between.
“Been out here for two weeks, another two, maybe three before we go home. There’s plenty of livestock to move. We’re just back and forth, back and forth between Cowarie and Jamestown.” I run into them again two days later. All three heading south this time and loaded to the brim with cattle.
When she docks and the ramp lowers I can see her proportions. From my perspective it seems ridiculous. The deception is complete when I look straight down the deck through to the opposite bank: make it a bit longer and you’d have a floating bridge. It’s only when viewed from a bird’s-eye view or side-on from a distance that one can appreciate the true enormity of this project. And I don’t just mean the size of the barge. It isn’t until the next morning when I go for a walk along the southern bank, that I can see she has a name: M.V. Margaret.
This part of the track was cut off by flood waters in June 2025. On average, major flood events like this one occur every 10 to 15 years. And usually they’ll happen two years in a row.
This part of the Birdsville Track has been under water since June following a major flooding event, creating major disruptions for livestock transporters. Images: Thomas Wielecki
There’s been a barge in service in this area since the late ‘40s. The minuscule Tom Brennan was the first. It was superseded by a much larger double-ended pontoon-style vessel in 1989 with folding ramps and twin outboards. It was capable of carrying one light vehicle the size of a ute or 4×4 at a time.
Apparently it could also be adapted to host run-on-run-off livestock. In practice this would have been a bit of a struggle. Imagine trying to herd footloose cattle without the aid of gates or fences that just got off a truck onto a small rocking vessel.
But without the capability to carry heavy vehicles this service was somewhat restricted. Even though it was considerably more advanced than the original dinghy arrangement, it was still a long way from ideal.
Cattle, for example, would have to be sold in Queensland or make a much longer journey to Adelaide. All this would have a negative effect on the South Australian economy. Meat supplies and jobs would be put at risk.
Margaret had only been in service for a couple of weeks before I arrived. The project was conceived six months earlier pretty much as the Cooper was swallowing the Birdsville Track. Local pastoralists were concerned about getting their stock to market on time. With the current flood event underway, the new project was swiftly approved by the SA government and announced on July 16, 2025. The cost? $27.4 million.
To settle for the night I have to drive a fair way up the creek down a dusty set of tracks, well past the crooked ‘Cooper Creek Punt, Public Camping Ground’ sign. It politely asks campers to ‘Please Remain Within a 1 Kilometre Area’. But even at the edge of the unmarked “camp ground” it is hard to get away from the impossibly bright needle-like lights piercing my eyeballs. Other than that the blackness is absolute. And there’s not a soul around.
It isn’t until the next morning when I go for a walk along the southern bank, that I can see she has a name: M.V. Margaret.
The morning is glorious. I wake before the sun. From the roof-rack tent I can see further than from ground level. But it’s still flat all around. The sky is clear and the air is cool and still. The only distraction is the distant rumble of generators.
What started as a peaceful morning quickly turns into a blustery furnace. The strengthening nor’easter pulls heat from the desert and chops up the Cooper. I ask the barge boys if there’s any bookings scheduled for today. Both are wearing fly nets and hats. They are faceless in the sun’s glare. It’s like talking to a pair of pineapples. Mick, the pineapple on the right, looks at his iPad and assures me the books are full. “We should be flat out,” he quips.
Not much to do out here when there’s no action. I park in the shade of a small demountable and hide in my camper to get away from the hostile conditions. The dash shows 43 degrees outside. Even though Margaret is booked out for the day, the afternoon is dead. But this is the outback, not an international airport. And out here schedules can often be at the whim of the gods.
My restlessness is finally broken when a cloud of dust appears on the southern horizon.
With twinkling headlights the beast slowly grows out of the heat haze. For a while it looks like some kind of heaving creature out of ‘Dune’. When it pulls up with a loud hiss the world goes dark. I’m trapped inside a thick dust bubble. My eyes fill with grit. My teeth crunch.
Wearing a pair of thongs, tight shorts and a sleeveless shirt, the bloke climbs down. By now enough dust has settled to reveal ‘Viking’ on the side of the diarrhoea-coloured truck. Facing me is a large toothy grin, dark square sunnies and a bright orange baseball cap.
Cooper Creek is actually Australia’s second-longest river system after the Murray-Darling. It’s dry for most of its length, most of the time. Images: Thomas Wielecki
“G’day!” he stretches out his hand: “Johny.” The truck has blocked the sun and the wind. Johny’s standing there beaming with his white teeth and hand outstretched. I stare at him. The world stands still for a moment.
By anyone’s reckoning Johny’s as ocker as they come; going by looks alone you’d be fooled. But spend a few minutes chatting and there’s the faintest whiff of an accent. Johny’s from Legoland; he’s Danish.
“I fell in love with the place straight away. I came here in my early twenties to see what all the fuss was about Australia. And stayed. Now I live in the Barossa.”
Without going into too much detail, he married, had two kids, divorced and got on the road. “My marriage didn’t work out, but my kids are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. This truck and my life on the road probably come second.”
He’s already clocked two million kilometres on his Star. But the first thing he did when he bought it new was paint it that colour. And he carries his kids’ names on the side: H.P and Francie.
“The colour is called golden tan, and a lot of people mistake it for baby-poo brown. It’s actually based on the dirt from around Tibooburra. I’ve always loved that colour for a truck.”
Been out here for two weeks, another two, maybe three before we go home.
Johny’s also ferrying cattle, and he’s heading north to Cowarie to pick up another load to take down to Jamestown where he’s just come from.
This part of the Cooper is the narrowest and deepest point within practical reach of the Birdsville Track. Here it’s just short of two-hundred-metres wide and around four-metres deep, depending of course on rainfall intensity further north. In the 2010-11 floods its waters stretched 400 kilometres across the immeasurably flat country around Innamincka.
Cooper Creek is actually Australia’s second-longest river system after the Murray-Darling. It’s dry for most of its length, most of the time. Activated only by exceptional rainfall throughout its catchment, it begins life on the western slopes of the Great Divide around Longreach/Charters Towers flowing in a south-westerly direction.
If there’s enough water to make it this far, it’ll drain into Lake Eyre, the world’s third-largest terminal lake system. With the ocean eleven metres higher, the waters will stay here until they evaporate. It can take four months for water to travel from central Queensland to here. This year Lake Eyre has been at its fullest since 1974. Yet already the water is evaporating faster than it’s going in – allowing the track to reopen recently.
Margaret is of modular design, made up of 12 rectangular pontoons for ease of transport and was designed specifically to carry A-doubles. She’s the largest of her type in South Australia. When levels subside and the track reopens she’ll be dismantled and put into storage until the next flood event. This is another challenge which can fall victim to unpredictability: for Margaret to be dismantled, she needs to be floating. But at the same time the track has to be fully open to traffic.
I hop aboard with Johny to get a behind-the-wheel view of Margaret. Once on board we get out to enjoy the view. The front and rear ramps are up. After he’s filled out the paperwork we relax a bit. Mick, the ferry operator (as they are officially known), joins us. He’s still hiding inside his head net. His face is still a mystery. I comment on Margaret’s glacial pace. “I clocked her the other day,” Mick chuckles. “Half a kilometre an hour!”
Margaret has the capacity to carry two prime movers side by side and operates up to 35-40 crossings in a 12-hour shift. Images: Thomas Wielecki
When Johny and his brown truck blow away with the dust, Mick and I settle for a chat. He’s a humorous soul.
“It’s an oddity for me. First time I’ve driven a boat that’s on a cable. You can’t really go anywhere,” he laughs. “It’s just back and forth. But there’s more to it than what people think. The weather out here can be unpredictable. When you have a strong side wind and you throw a truck on, she’s like a huge sail. It’ll pull you across a full barge width. So you’ll have to tighten one side to get yourself back on track.
“Sometimes you have to drive the four winches independently to get yourself into the gates. The other day we had a big sandstorm roll in. It was howling. You couldn’t see the other side. We had to shut down and hang tight until it blew over.
“I started at 18 on prawn trawlers on the Barrier Reef. That’s how I got into it. I’ve always worked on the coast or at sea. This is my first inland job.”
Mick’s actually a Master 5. He’s certified to operate any waterborne vessel up to 24-metres long. He’s a marine guy. And he FIFOs from Tassie for his two-weekly shifts aboard ‘Margaret’.
I called him in the new year. He told me the pace had picked up after I left. “It was flat out 10 to five every day. We’d sometimes do 35 to 40 crossings in a 12-hour shift. Mostly cattle trucks. A few days ago it just stopped. All the ringers were leaving the stations. It’ll be dead next week.”
This is the outback, not an international airport. And out here schedules can often be at the whim of the gods.
He spent Christmas and New Year’s on the Cooper.
It was late afternoon on my last day when I found myself kicking the dirt on the northern bank. A couple more empty cattle trucks had just crossed from the south. All I’d seen in almost three days were cattle trucks; loaded going south, empty heading the other way. I’d met an Italian couple crossing south in a large rental camper. A front-end loader going north. And briefly spoke to two older dudes whose names I never got. They’d driven an old Landcruiser all the way from the Eyre Peninsula just to see this engineering marvel. It’s a big deal up here.
I was about to call it a day when a little white Fuso rolled up to the STOP sign. Not to be rude, I said hello. And because it was a quiet evening and there was no one else to pester I asked the driver what he was doing out here. I recognised him. He was that quiet bloke escaping the midday sun in the shade of the construction crew’s demountables when I first arrived two days ago. Turns out Andrew Pennicott’s been roaming these outback roads for 40 years. He joined the Highways Department in 1986 as a mechanic, and in ’99 went on to the Department of Main Roads after a three-year stint in WA.
These days he mainly looks after gensets along some of the remotest roads in the region. The Birdsville, Strzelecki and Oodnadatta tracks being some of the more familiar ones. His regular loop for the past 25 years also includes the Gawler and Flinders Ranges and the APY Lands which take up a big rectangular chunk of SA’s north western corner.
“I’m on the road 12 days at a time. Used to be 18. I’ll average 5,000 kilometres, but it can be more depending on the spread of the gangs,” he says.
His new Fuso’s only clocked up 165,000, and his previous two Isuzus had nearly a million each before he replaced them. All have been modified to suit the terrain he treads. While we wait for Margaret to arrive from the other side, he confesses: “I used to maintain the old ferry.”
On average, major flood events like this one occur every 10 to 15 years. And usually they’ll happen two years in a row. Images: Thomas Wielecki
He probably just mentioned it because I ran out of questions to ask about his truck. I’m in disbelief. I’ve seen the first dinghy, I’ve been around Margaret for a couple of days, and I’ve only heard about her predecessor. Now I’m standing in front of someone with first-hand experience!
“Back in ‘89 me and a mate were coming down the track. The Cooper was flooded. We knew about the barge and we knew we could get across. When we got here, the barge was on the other side. We couldn’t see anyone. It was late arvo. We yelled and screamed but there was no one. So we jumped in and swam across to get the barge. The two blokes had just knocked off and were having tea in the hut,” he says.
“The old barge had two outboard motors mounted on a swivel. To turn around you had to turn the motors around and pin them. There was a bloke on each motor and the barge ran along two cables between banks.”
Because he was a mechanic and on contract for DMR, he started servicing the barge every time he came through, which was roughly every month.
“I’ll show you something,” he urges me to follow. “This is one of the old tie downs.”
Right there, on the side of the access ramp is a rusty old steel post driven into the dirt. It’s about waist high and has a steel loop on top. “This is what the cable was tied to for the old ferry. There was another one across the road and two more on the other side of the creek.”
It’s an oddity for me. First time I’ve driven a boat that’s on a cable. You really can’t go anywhere. It’s just back and forth.
When the sun drops behind the eternally flat horizon, things settle somewhat. Flies hell bent on ruining your day vanish. The temperature drops to placid. The howling wind turns into a delightful breeze. The dust is no longer airborne. And the sky fades from a relentlessly blazing blue to a delicate magenta.
We walk down to the water’s edge and lift up a big old faded sign lying face down in the sand. The old relics are still here discarded and forgotten. I ask him about the old barge, the one he used to service. He tells me matter of factly that it’s still sitting in the old depot in Maree.
The barge boys turn on the blinding white lights on both banks. Margaret has her four corner spotlights and deck lights switched on. As darkness swallows the final glow of the sky, the world is now contained within only what’s visible. The feeling is more or less claustrophobic.
A distant light takes ages to arrive. Another empty cattle truck from the south. Lit up like a Christmas tree, the Kenworth slowly rumbles into view, enveloped in a glowing orange fog of dust. He’s rolling straight onto the barge. I jump on for a night ride. It’s surreal. We’re floating in a sea of darkness. Half way across we become an insignificant little speck no more substantial than one of the faint stars overhead.
Young Chris Wilson is doing the same as all the others, moving cattle from Cowarie to Jamestown. “I like driving at night. It relaxes me. And there’s less traffic.”
When Margaret finally fades from view in the rear vision mirror, I’m plunged into the unending bleakness of the Birdsville Track. This is a time for spiritual reflection, and you can’t help it. It makes you question if what you’ve just experienced was even real. If ‘Margaret’ and all the protagonists in this story weren’t just a dream.
Johny, pictured above right, is one of many trucking operators relying on Margaret to transport cattle across the cut-off Birdsville Track. Images: Thomas Wielecki
On my way through Maree I make a point of visiting the old barge to prove to myself there is a tangible link between the past three days and the present. That Andrew Pennicott was not just an imaginary character.
And after a while I find her, discarded in an empty lot. She’s nameless. But she exists as proof. Who knows, perhaps at some point in the future Margaret will join little Tom Brennan on that lonely rest area. But I doubt it. She’s way longer than half a footy field.
“From where I’m standing it looks more like a healthy river, two-hundred-metres wide, than a ‘creek’.”
“Been out here for two weeks, another two, maybe three before we go home.”
“It isn’t until the next morning when I go for a walk along the southern bank, that I can see she has a name: M.V. Margaret.”
