Blog

After our walk in the Finke Gorge National Park we headed towards the MacDonnell Ranges on the other side. We stopped at Ellery Creek Big Hole. It is a gorgeous swimming hole and as it was stinking hot (about 38 degrees) we stopped for a swim. It was lovely and refreshing and I swam over to the other side of it twice.

We then headed to Glen Helens Resort where we hoped to re-fuel and buy something for dinner. But there was no shop there, only a pub and fuel. The camping ground looked a bit yuck so we headed to Ormiston Gorge. This was a lovely campground and only one other camper was there. And again, it was only $6 per person.

We chose our spot, parked up Dory, got out and immediately were attacked by flies of the buzzy variety. They got in my ears; my eyes and one even went up my nose! I had to blow really hard to get it to come out. Dad and John, I think you know what we are talking about. We did this spastic waving of the arms thing to get rid of them and hopped straight back in the car. We put on our head nets, took a deep breath and tried again.

We lit a citronella candle, a mozzie coil and got two incense burning but it didn’t help at all. I had to drink my wine under my netting.

We had no fresh food left (or beer), as we haven’t seen a shop for days, so we were on emergency rations. We drank our emergency bottle of wine and cooked a packet rice-a-riso, two-minute noodles and a tin of soy and ginger tuna. We ate in the car to hide from the buzzy things. As soon as it got dark the flies seemed to disappear. We must start cooking after dark in future.

We got up early to drive 4 km further along the track and do a couple of walks at Palm Valley. The tour bus driver told us that Dory wouldn’t have enough ground clearance to drive there as their company Delica got stuck up there. “Yeah yeah”, we thought, Dory will be fine.

Anyway the track had a mixture of terrains. It was very rocky in parks and definitely needed 4wd and clearance (no Christine, your Datsun 120y would not make it!) It was my first time driving on sand and that was a bit of fun until we scraped Dory’s belly. We drove on a little further, then parked in what appeared to be a RAV4 car park.

This is where Dory waited for us.

We got out and walked up the track to check out the terrain. Looks like the tour bus driver was right. We would have got stuck on the next bit of sand (where the middle bit between the wheel tracks was way too high). We walked the rest of the way (it was only 15 minutes).

At the end was an oasis of dense clusters of towering red cabbage palms (they weren’t really red, but that’s what they call them).

We did a one-hour walk. We saw what we believe to be a snake track on the sand. It looked like a tyre tread pattern of about snake width. We had a little look but didn’t see it. It’s on Mikes “wildlife to see” list”.

We took the Mereenie loop track to Alice Springs. This is a wide, red, corrugated 4wd track of around 200km. We had to buy a permit as it goes across Aboriginal land.

I decided to drive (for the first time) as I have more off-road experience (well that was my reasoning).

The road was rough as guts. It was so heavily corrugated it was jiggling everything loose. We had to have a number of wee stops.

In places there was loose sand on the corrugations and Dory was snaking all over the place and at one stage we were going sideways. And we were only doing 40 km/hr. We were no danger though as the road was really wide and we passed only two cars for the 200km stretch.

We took a diversion to Goose Bluff, which is one of the world’s largest comet craters measuring 5km across.

Afterwards we headed for Finke Gorge National Park. Access is by 4WD only. We drove along the rocky riverbed to the camping ground. It was only $6 each to camp via an honesty box, and they provided warm solar showers and flush toilets. There were gas burners as well as gas barbecues and all were in good working order.

It was a lovely spot. We had driven an hour along a 4wd track to get there and were in the middle of nowhere and all alone. We were quietly drinking a beer and enjoying the solitude when a tour bus rocks up. Well more of a 4wd truck, but still, about 10 Germans get off and start cooking up a chicken curry. In our efforts to try and outdo them we cooked up seafood pasta in a garlic and red wine sauce. (Tin of salmon and a jar of dolmio).

We got up early to do the 7 km walk around the rim of Kings Canyon. It was a hot day so we used our camel backs for the first time.

It was a very steep start, but worth it. Sheer cliff drops more than 270m to the canyon floor. The walk lead us around the rim, then into the gorge where there was an oasis called the Garden of Eden. It amazes me how there is so much lush vegetation in the middle of the desert. There were a few people swimming in the swimming hole.

We felt pretty good after the walk, so knocked back a few beers. We bought some overpriced goods from the store and cooked up a nice meal of steak, mashed potato and a side of flies (not a misprint).

There seemed to be more dingoes than usual at this campsite and they were sniffing around Dory all night. I had nightmares of being cornered by dingoes. In the morning a rather expensive looking leather sandal had appeared at our campsite. Later on in the morning, its owner (a rather scrawny dingo) came to collect it.

This time we got up early to see the sunrise over Uluru. Again it was cloudy, so it was a bit of a fizzer. Plus all the tourists were starting to get on my nerves. Every one of them seemed to be smoking at 6am in the morning!

After the sunrise we headed off to the Olgas to do a couple of walks. We did the Walpa Gorge walk and the Valley of the winds walk then moved on.

We arrived at Kings Canyon in the afternoon and set up camp.

We had to use up some veges, so we had pasta with zucchini and mushroom in a olive oil and garlic sauce.

We had a bit of a laugh at the couple that set up camp opposite us. They brought out their fancy table, laid a nice table cloth, put two red wine glasses on it, opened a bottle of red wine, lit some candles, then opened two tins of baked beans for their dinner.

We awoke in the middle of the night to our neighbour’s car door slamming about 100 times. As I started to come to, I realised it was morning and they were probably heading out to see the sunrise over Uluru. We had planned to do this the following morning but as we were already awake and thought we should make and effort to go see it. We missed the sunrise, but we did the 9km walk around the base of the rock.

The climb was open in the morning. Mike got all excited and put on his boots ready for the climb. Then we got to the base and he realised how steep it was and he is scared of heights. He decided not to go. I thought about it but thought the base walk would be better. Later in the day the climb was closed to wind.

Back at camp we bought a couple of head nets as the flies are starting to get to us. We blobbed out for the rest of the day and went and saw the sunset at the Olga’s. Again it was a bit too cloudy for the brilliant red colour, but was still very impressive.

Dinner we had pork with hokkien noodles and a teriyaki sauce. I don’t think we could eat better if we ate out.

Some aboriginal art:

Today was a long drive as it is about 800kms from Coober Pedy to Uluru. As we crossed the border into the Northern Territory the speed limit signs changed from 110 to 130. Then the border police stopped us and Mike was breathalysed for the second time since we arrived in Aus. They must have a drink-driving problem here.

About 200 km’s short of the border a Ute had pulled off the road, all doors open and three aboriginals lay out on the dirt next to it, passed out. Probably had too much to drink and just crashed when they got tired. Lucky they didn’t make it to the border I guess.

We arrived at Ayers Rock Resort and just had time to set up camp and go and see the sun set on the rock. People were there with their champagne picnics. I wish we had thought of that. I had a beer instead.

The rock is indeed very impressive. There was too much cloud to really notice the changing of the colours, but it was still very cool.

We cooked some soy marinated pork and rice for dinner. It was quick, easy and yum.