Birdsville, Australia on my Burgman 650

Summary: Visting Birdsville, one of these isolated desert places in Australia, with no significant town in a radius of 750km, has always been an adventure. It certainly has been an adventure for me.

I have just (July 31, 2010) completed the daily reports from my journey Around Australia, and I am already planning the next trip! 
This time I will ride from Brisbane to Birdsville and back to Brisbane. As it currently stands, it will take 5 days and almost 4,000 km to do this loop.

Birdsville is a small town located in the Channel Country of western Queensland, Australia. The town is located 1,590 kilometres west of the state capital, Brisbane, and 720 kilometres south of the city of Mount Isa. Birdsville is situated on the edge of the Simpson Desert, and the climate is very arid. At the 2006 census, Birdsville had a population of 115.

So why Birdsville? Some will already know my little passion about the IBEM locations in Australia. IBEM stands for "I've Been Everywhere Man", a song written by Geoff Mack. The song contains 94 locations in Australia, all of which I would like to visit. There is no deadline; I get there when I get there. I have seen 64 of the 94 locations so far. This IBEM trip #7 will bring another 9 IBEM locationsto the table.

Planning

What planning?  Well, and of course, there is a little bit of planning, say 2 hours to map the routes, and 2 hours to prepare my Suzuki Burgman 650 Executive — believe it or not, a maxi-scooter! It had its 42,000 km service at the end of July, and both, bike and rider are ready to roll.
I am sure the odd hour of preparation will be added on as required.

Brisbane–Birdsville and Back (Version 1)

I will employ a new tool for this trip: despite utilising a GPSr, I added a rally roll to the mix. The latter gives me trip information at a glance, in a way my GPSr can not.

Map

The map below lists SPOT II messages — so-called flags — between August 7th and August 11th, 2010.

How to Use this Map?

The map works like any other Google map you may have used before. Simply use the "+" and "−" buttons to zoom in or out, and arrows to move the map. The map can also be draged with the mouse (hold and move). If you have a scroll button on your mouse, rolling forward will zoom in, rolling backwards will zoom out on the map.

Feel free to select a lower number in the "Percent Fill" drop-down box for quicker loading and a lower number of message flags. The message flags on the map are the orange (OK Message: updated every 10 minutes), green (I am OK Stop Message, manually triggered when stopping on purpose) and yellow flags (Permanent stop, manualy triggered, e.g. when staying overnight).

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