We managed to get Dory in for a service today, so that is something less to worry about. We also got a load of overdue washing done at the campground.
Port Augusta is actually a nice town. We had been told to avoid it, but it may have been a dive once, but it certainly isn’t now. There is a nice harbour and a lot of development on the foreshore.
We stocked up on food and headed to the Flinders Ranges, about a 2.5 hour drive.
Here is the route so far and we’re not even half way!!!!
Heres a slideshow of some of the stuff we have seen in the red centre over the last week.
We thought the Ghan might be a nice way to travel back down to Adelaide and they had seats available for Dory and us, but only in 3rd class. I didn’t really fancy sitting for 24 hours so we decided against it. Gold Kangaroo class would be the only way to travel. You get a sleeping compartment and silver service dining, wine included, but these seats sell out months in advance.
Today was a driving day so we wrote a poem about the Ghan.
The Ghan is a train
That traverses this terrain
For 3000 K’s
It’s a very long way
The journey will begin
In a town called Darwin
There’s a butler and maid
All the way to Adelaide
They’ll serve you fine wine
In a carriage where you’ll dine
In two days you’ll arrive
All relaxed and revived
Unless you travel 3rd class
Then you’ll have a sore arse.
The drive was the usual. Seven hours of red dirt, scrub, road kill, giant eagles, and numerous fuel stops. Mike picked up Dory’s fuel cap that he left at a service station a week ago. It was a good chance for me to get up to date with the blogs, as I seem to have lost my book.
We stopped for the night at Cadney Homestead and camped in a car park at the back, right beside the railway line. We sat and drank beer and watched the Ghan go by about 8pm. We were glad we weren’t on it.
We awoke early to do a 7km, 3-4 hour walk of the Ormiston Pound. I got up and immediately was swamped by flies again. I did my spastic dance and jumped straight back into Dory in search of my head net.
We headed off on our walk at 8am and it was already 35 degrees. We walked for about 15 minutes and decided the Ormiston Pound walk was boring so we backtracked and did the 1.5-hour gorge walk instead. This was a lovely walk through towering red cliffs and down to a water hole surround by lush green vegetation. As hot as it was, the green weedy water hole couldn’t tempt me in.
After the walk we decided we were done with gorges and it was time to go to Alice Springs and spend some money.
Along the way we saw some black cockatoos, which are quite rare to see. Mike crossed them off his “wildlife to see” list.
I expected Alice Springs to be a larger version of Cooper Pedy (i.e. shithole) but was pleasantly surprised. We drove in past modern homes and arrived at a modern, clean town with lots of green vegetation. We stocked up on food and we finally got rid of John’s chairs that were falling apart and becoming quite dangerous.
We cooked up a feast of chicken curry with rice. We slept in the tent for the first time since Adelaide, as Dory has been way too hot the last few nights.
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.