SAILING THE STRZELECKI

Sailing the deep lakes that occasionally form in Australia’s arid outback might not bring the same glory as the Sydney to Hobart, but it has its own challenges and joys for the sailors who chase these ephemeral water bodies.

- DEAN SEWELL

WHEN MORE THAN 400mm of unseasonal rain was dumped on the northern end of South Australia's Flinders Ranges in February 2022, it wasn't only local graziers who welcomed it. The deluge meant a huge ephemeral inland water body-Lake Boocaltaninna - formed on a tributary of Strzelecki Creek, part of the Lake Eyre Basin. Quick to realise the potential this presented for adventure sailing in the desert was Bob Backway, commodore of the Lake Eyre Yachting Club (LEYC), perched on the gravelly corner at the start to the Oodnadatta Track. I'd been waiting a decade for something like this and the photographic opportunity it presented. So when I heard Bob had put out a call to club members for an organised adventure sail on Boocaltaninna, I was already packing for the 4000km odyssey from my home in Sydney's Blue Mountains to join the world-renowned inland yachting club to document the event.

I ENTER LEYC'S gate as Bob emerges, wiping some oily solution or diesel from his hands with a rag. I first met Bob in 2012 when I joined 139 sailors and 43 yachts west of the Strzelecki Desert for a regatta on the 7m-deep Lake Killalpaninna, another ephemeral water body, which periodically fills with water from Queensland's Channel Country. Numbers for this 2022 event aren't expected to be as high because of COVID restrictions and upward-spiralling fuel prices. But a few outback adventurers are here already. Bob takes me to a campsite and introduces long-term friends and previous desert sailors Peter and Heather Bullen.