Days 85 - 94

Be warned, if you do not like rocks, gorges and walking, Central Australia may not be the place for you. These last ten days have been jam packed in terms of the sites we have seen (or more precisely, the amount of rocks we have seen), the amount of kms we have walked, the adjustment of life at a temperature below 30 degrees and also the adjustment of life with a third person travelling in the car and sharing the camper trailer.

That third person is my sister Sarah, who we met up with at Uluru (Connelian) Airport. It is fantastic having her with us and we are amazed at how well she has adjusted to life in the “bush”. However, like us at the beginning of our trip, she is struggling with how dirty everything gets, identifying the numerous noises of wildlife during the night, going to the toilet in the bush and wondering whether every spider she sees is poisonous or not (the answer to which we tell her is “definitely no” but in truth it is probably “yes” and “lets get the hell out of here pronto”). We gave her quite a steep learning curve into camping as we bush camped for the first three days in a beautiful but very dusty site with dingo’s howling during the night and a night temperature of 3.5 degrees, it was freezing!

Those that read the last blog will be pleased to hear that we eventually found Uluru (for those that haven’t yet caught up, we mistook Mt Connor for Uluru on first glance). Although it is such an iconic image of Australia and we are pleased that we have seen it, we were all a little disappointed with it and don’t quite understand why. One reason may be that for our liking, you could not get close enough to it. The climb of the rock was closed due to strong winds for both days that we were there (there was a list with at least 12 other reasons for why the climb can be closed) and the base walk that we did had a fenced off area between you and the rock of about 50 – 100 metres the majority of the way around. This is due to certain areas being sacred sites to the Aboriginal people where you cannot photograph or walk. Having said all of this, when we first saw the rock, we could not take our eyes off it due to its colour and size – it really has a presence. I also took over 50 photos of it at different times of day, including at sunset and sunrise, so it could not have been that bad.

On the other hand, we thoroughly enjoyed the Olgas and Kings Canyon. At both of these places, we did long walks taking you all the way through the sites. At Kings Canyon, we did a walk where we climbed to the top of the Canyon and then down into the middle where we found a lush oasis of paperbarks, palms and a swimming hole with glorious reflections of the trees and the Canyon in. Unfortunately for my legs, we then had to climb back out! The colours of Kings Canyon were very impressive and although I took a lot of photos, none of them do it justice.

We gave Sarah the experience of corrugations whilst driving to the MacDonnell Ranges along the Meerenie Loop. The road only gets graded once a year and that was 11 months ago. For 160 kms non-stop, Sarah had to endure being shaken around in the back of the car to a constant noise of d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d (say it as a child pronouncing “D”). The road conditions did not get any better once we left the Meerenie Loop and drove along the 4WD track to Palm Valley. Some of the pot holes we found in the ground would have been a great spot for fishing in. The rough drive was well worth it though for Palm Valley was stunning. The burnt orange colour of the sheer cliffs at sunset with white ghost gum trees set into the cliff and red cabbage palms fringing the waterhole was an incredible sight. We later found out during a ranger talk given around the camp fire at our camp spot that 99% of the Worlds red cabbage palm trees are within 5 kms of Palm Valley (a fascinating fact I am sure for all of you!). I admit that we initially only attended the ranger talk because of the prospect of a warm, blazing fire as we did not have any firewood of our own but found the talk to be extremely interesting, especially when the ranger spoke about the high proportion of mammals that have become extinct in Central Australia due to introduced animals by the Europeans (ok, I may have become a little bit of a geek!).

We left Palm Valley and drove to the MacDonnell Ranges, another stunning area with yet more rocks, gorges and walks to do! Some of our highlights of this area were the walk we did around the Pound at Ormiston Gorge, Ellerey Creek Big Hole for its peacefulness and Standley Chasm, a deep red cleft that rises 80 metres above the floor and glows from reflected sunlight creating a stunning display of rich colours. We also did some great bush camping in this area and had huge fires to keep warm.

On our first night in the MacDonnell Ranges, we did not bush camp but ended up camping at Glen Helen Resort, as the national park camp ground was full. I knew it was going to be an interesting night when I saw three tour buses pull up outside the reception and the guy at reception announcing there was a happy hour and karaoke that night. We went for happy hour to warm up a little and the karaoke started. The guy running the karaoke started singing his first number – it was painstakingly embarrassing how bad he was! As if that wasn’t bad enough, he then proceeded to do yet more numbers whilst two rather large German ladies stood up and started to dance not quite in time with the music!! It felt very surreal to be watching and listening to this after the peace and solitude we had experienced during the last three months!!

I have mentioned a few times about how cold it was during the nights. It really has been quite a shock to our bodies after we had come down so quickly from the Tropics to temperatures of no more than 20 degrees during the day, dropping down to zero at night. I have slept for the first time this trip in two fleeces, a woolly hat, gloves and the sleeping bag under the duvet.

Not only has the weather had an impact on how long we sit around the camp fire at night for, but it has also had an impact on the waste cooking oil. The filtering of the waste cooking oil is taking over twice as long as it normally does and the Battered Fish has taken longer to start in the mornings because the oil in the car has not heated up. This means we are running on diesel for longer in the mornings before we can switch to cooking oil.

We are now back in Alice Springs collecting more WVO for our journey North across the Tanami Desert to the Gibb River Road (we are not predicting there will be many takeaway restaurants in the Tanami Desert so need to stock up as much as possible!). We cannot wait to get out of the cold and back into the Tropics, which will hopefully be in the next week!

I have included some photos of Palm Valley, Kings Canyon, Uluru at sunset, Sarah and I at Uluru, Standley Chasm, Gerard and I at Ellery Creek Big Hole, Gerard and I at the Olgas at sunset and a Major Mitchell Cockatoo (a Pink Cockatoo) that we saw at Palm Valley.

Thank you to all who have emailed and blogged us – as always, it is great hearing your news.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your summer over in the Northern Hemisphere and your winter over in the Southern Hemisphere!

Rach and Ged x