After another longish drive we arrived at Uluru, or Ayers Rock, in time to book into the campsite, and then head off to watch the sunset. We’ve seen hundreds of photos of Ayers Rock, but still nothing had prepared me for this enormous red monolith rising out of the otherwise barren landscape. There is a designated viewing carpark for cars, and we were happy that the one for the hordes of buses was further back across the road. A friendly gathering of people, and although the sunset wasn’t particularly spectacular because of the dust Nick wandered around and found someone who’d just travelled down the Great Central Road (or Great Central Dirt-track as I’ve renamed it) and said it was in good condition as the grader had just been through. This cheered us as we’d been told that the pot-holes were a foot deep, and weren’t looking forward to 1,000 km of that.
Next day we had a leisurely breakfast in an almost deserted campsite as, judging by the unzipping of tents and revving of engines at 5am, everyone else had gone to watch the sun rise on Uluru (you’ll notice I call it by both names, like the National Park and road-map people, I can’t decided on just one). We arrived a bit later and did one or two short trails to look at rock-art, caves etc. Sections of it round the base are closed off to the public, again because of its religious significance to the Aboriginal people. But strangely enough the extremely steep walk to the top (hand-rails up a near-vertical bare rock-face) isn’t closed, although there are notices all over the place asking the public to show respect and not climb it. In the visitors centre there are tales of how many people have perished doing the climb (38 – mostly from heart attacks), and we couldn’t understand why they still keep the walk open, seeing as vast tracts of land in the Territory belonging to Aboriginal communities are no entry zones to the general public. Strange.
However, they do encourage you to try the 7 km Valley of the Winds walk at the Olga range, 40 km away. So we headed off there, and found a range of domes of stunning beauty. Despite its billing as ‘hard’ the walk wasn’t nearly as difficult as some we’d done - perhaps its been hyped up a bit to make those not walking Uluru feel better. Although the day was pretty hot again we spent two or three hours enjoying the wonderful colours and clear views, knowing it would be our last walk of the trip. We returned to Uluru again in the evening, and were rewarded with one of the famous sunsets this time.
Next morning it was finally time to start the long drive home. We had about 2,000 km to cover, and weren’t sure if we’d have just one more, or two nights on the road. We set the alarm for 5 am and were able to see the sun rise behind Ayers Rock and watch its rays spreading across the desert to light up The Olgas. Our farewell to this part of Australia that has given us so many stunning sights. We made breakfast in the carpark (glad of hot coffee, it was about 7C this early in the morning) and were on the road by 7.15.
The first 1,000 km would be on the Great Central Road, which we felt was our final ‘must see’ or perhaps ‘must do’. It turned out to be a lot less corrugated than we’d feared, and we were able to drive at between 80 and 100 kph most of the way, although the driving itself is extremely tiring because of the constant juddering over the ruts, and also because of the concentration needed: in the blink of an eye you find yourself swerving in soft sand, or in a pot-hole hidden by bull-dust.
We stopped briefly at a cave when an unfortunate explorer and prospector Lewis Lasseter, whose camels had bolted, sheltered from the fierce January heat in 1931. He was taken care of by an Aboriginal family group, walked many miles with them but eventually became too weak and died soon after reaching town. Nick wondered if some of the camels we saw round there were Lassiter’s camels’ progeny. Apart from the camels, there really was very little to see and so we kept ourselves going by counting cars: tally for the two days’ driving was 32 cars (all but one and a road-train coming in the opposite direction) and 173 dead cars + 1 caravan – wrecks long abandoned at the side of the road. We did meet a couple of mining convoys in our ‘live car’ count, trailers with outrider vehicles to clear the road, carrying gigantic bits of mining kit. We literally had to get right off the road to let them pass as they took up the whole space, and then wait for the clouds of dust to disperse.
We covered a good distance the first day, and were so whacked we were glad to find a cabin (called The Hilton) at a friendly roadhouse, which had two pet emus running round. We had a comfy bed, kitchen and TV, though we had to use the shower block on the site, and I was a bit worried that I might bump into an emu if I had to get up to the loo in the middle of the night. In the event I didn’t and the emus were locked up so I needn’t have worried. We made another early getaway by 6.30, and by 10 were very pleased to hit the bitumen for the remainder of the journey. We turned off the aircon and opened the air vent, and were covered in dust that blew straight into our faces (just a small part of the dust that’s got into every crevice in the car).
A day of long straight almost empty roads. There are so few cars here, and I realise now why they give the traffic report for the whole of Australia each morning on the radio. My big worry had been how I was going to overtake road-trains, some of which are four container trucks long, joined together like a train. In fact when you have over 18 km of straight road without a bend and few cars in the opposite direction, it’s not so terrifying. They don’t tend to slow down to let you pass, though, as they would then have to climb back up their 17 or so gears.
By stopping only briefly for a cup of tea, and later some excellent fish and chips at a roadhouse jumping with boozed-up footie fans (we’d been listening to the Aussie Rules Grand Final on the radio, a sacred day in September) we finally drove through the gates of our block at 10pm, having driven 1,200 km that day, 59 days after we set out. The flat seemed vast and oh so tidy and dust-free, and as for our bed, well, it was hard to get out of it next morning. Only sad thing is no Smudge the cat, who is now happily living with Kate in Adelaide.
Well, what a trip. We feel so lucky to have had the chance to explore just a small corner of this vast and wonderful country. I feel quite proud to have learnt new skills, mainly from Nick, who is so practical when it comes to living on and off the land – you may not be surprised to know that I was rather a novice camper when we started. Camping has taught us both freedom and discipline as we’ve gone along. I’ve loved it that when we’ve started off in the morning we often haven’t known exactly where we’ll be at the end of the day. The discipline is in the minutiae of camping itself – the inside of our car might have looked like junk heap, but when it came to making camp (and making supper) we had to know exactly where we’d put everything in order to find it again. It made us laugh that nearly every other camper's site was also surrounded by a storage system of large plastic boxes and brightly coloured Coles shopping bags.
We’ll miss the endless stretching roads and landscape of different colours, the pools and gorges. And the many, many people we’ve met and talked to along the way. We found that the campsites that had mainly Aussies staying were where we struck up most conversations; Johnny Foreigner, be he German, American or Brit, tended to keep himself to himself. Since I’ve been home I’ve rather missed the conversation on campsites and road conditions while we performed personal tasks like washing up or cleaning teeth: some of our best side-trips were made on the strength of this shared information. The travelling life is a whole parallel universe, and we feel lucky to have been part of it. And what’s more, we had the greatest fun!
(So much so that we will be heading out again next week, taking Kate and friend Matt across the Nullabor and back to Adelaide, and then on for a week or two to explore South Australia. That is, if I can leave my comfy bed again…)The next couple of blogs will be mainly photographic, with a bit from Nick on the roads we travelled.
Next day we had a leisurely breakfast in an almost deserted campsite as, judging by the unzipping of tents and revving of engines at 5am, everyone else had gone to watch the sun rise on Uluru (you’ll notice I call it by both names, like the National Park and road-map people, I can’t decided on just one). We arrived a bit later and did one or two short trails to look at rock-art, caves etc. Sections of it round the base are closed off to the public, again because of its religious significance to the Aboriginal people. But strangely enough the extremely steep walk to the top (hand-rails up a near-vertical bare rock-face) isn’t closed, although there are notices all over the place asking the public to show respect and not climb it. In the visitors centre there are tales of how many people have perished doing the climb (38 – mostly from heart attacks), and we couldn’t understand why they still keep the walk open, seeing as vast tracts of land in the Territory belonging to Aboriginal communities are no entry zones to the general public. Strange.
However, they do encourage you to try the 7 km Valley of the Winds walk at the Olga range, 40 km away. So we headed off there, and found a range of domes of stunning beauty. Despite its billing as ‘hard’ the walk wasn’t nearly as difficult as some we’d done - perhaps its been hyped up a bit to make those not walking Uluru feel better. Although the day was pretty hot again we spent two or three hours enjoying the wonderful colours and clear views, knowing it would be our last walk of the trip. We returned to Uluru again in the evening, and were rewarded with one of the famous sunsets this time.
Next morning it was finally time to start the long drive home. We had about 2,000 km to cover, and weren’t sure if we’d have just one more, or two nights on the road. We set the alarm for 5 am and were able to see the sun rise behind Ayers Rock and watch its rays spreading across the desert to light up The Olgas. Our farewell to this part of Australia that has given us so many stunning sights. We made breakfast in the carpark (glad of hot coffee, it was about 7C this early in the morning) and were on the road by 7.15.
The first 1,000 km would be on the Great Central Road, which we felt was our final ‘must see’ or perhaps ‘must do’. It turned out to be a lot less corrugated than we’d feared, and we were able to drive at between 80 and 100 kph most of the way, although the driving itself is extremely tiring because of the constant juddering over the ruts, and also because of the concentration needed: in the blink of an eye you find yourself swerving in soft sand, or in a pot-hole hidden by bull-dust.
We stopped briefly at a cave when an unfortunate explorer and prospector Lewis Lasseter, whose camels had bolted, sheltered from the fierce January heat in 1931. He was taken care of by an Aboriginal family group, walked many miles with them but eventually became too weak and died soon after reaching town. Nick wondered if some of the camels we saw round there were Lassiter’s camels’ progeny. Apart from the camels, there really was very little to see and so we kept ourselves going by counting cars: tally for the two days’ driving was 32 cars (all but one and a road-train coming in the opposite direction) and 173 dead cars + 1 caravan – wrecks long abandoned at the side of the road. We did meet a couple of mining convoys in our ‘live car’ count, trailers with outrider vehicles to clear the road, carrying gigantic bits of mining kit. We literally had to get right off the road to let them pass as they took up the whole space, and then wait for the clouds of dust to disperse.
We covered a good distance the first day, and were so whacked we were glad to find a cabin (called The Hilton) at a friendly roadhouse, which had two pet emus running round. We had a comfy bed, kitchen and TV, though we had to use the shower block on the site, and I was a bit worried that I might bump into an emu if I had to get up to the loo in the middle of the night. In the event I didn’t and the emus were locked up so I needn’t have worried. We made another early getaway by 6.30, and by 10 were very pleased to hit the bitumen for the remainder of the journey. We turned off the aircon and opened the air vent, and were covered in dust that blew straight into our faces (just a small part of the dust that’s got into every crevice in the car).
A day of long straight almost empty roads. There are so few cars here, and I realise now why they give the traffic report for the whole of Australia each morning on the radio. My big worry had been how I was going to overtake road-trains, some of which are four container trucks long, joined together like a train. In fact when you have over 18 km of straight road without a bend and few cars in the opposite direction, it’s not so terrifying. They don’t tend to slow down to let you pass, though, as they would then have to climb back up their 17 or so gears.
By stopping only briefly for a cup of tea, and later some excellent fish and chips at a roadhouse jumping with boozed-up footie fans (we’d been listening to the Aussie Rules Grand Final on the radio, a sacred day in September) we finally drove through the gates of our block at 10pm, having driven 1,200 km that day, 59 days after we set out. The flat seemed vast and oh so tidy and dust-free, and as for our bed, well, it was hard to get out of it next morning. Only sad thing is no Smudge the cat, who is now happily living with Kate in Adelaide.
Well, what a trip. We feel so lucky to have had the chance to explore just a small corner of this vast and wonderful country. I feel quite proud to have learnt new skills, mainly from Nick, who is so practical when it comes to living on and off the land – you may not be surprised to know that I was rather a novice camper when we started. Camping has taught us both freedom and discipline as we’ve gone along. I’ve loved it that when we’ve started off in the morning we often haven’t known exactly where we’ll be at the end of the day. The discipline is in the minutiae of camping itself – the inside of our car might have looked like junk heap, but when it came to making camp (and making supper) we had to know exactly where we’d put everything in order to find it again. It made us laugh that nearly every other camper's site was also surrounded by a storage system of large plastic boxes and brightly coloured Coles shopping bags.
We’ll miss the endless stretching roads and landscape of different colours, the pools and gorges. And the many, many people we’ve met and talked to along the way. We found that the campsites that had mainly Aussies staying were where we struck up most conversations; Johnny Foreigner, be he German, American or Brit, tended to keep himself to himself. Since I’ve been home I’ve rather missed the conversation on campsites and road conditions while we performed personal tasks like washing up or cleaning teeth: some of our best side-trips were made on the strength of this shared information. The travelling life is a whole parallel universe, and we feel lucky to have been part of it. And what’s more, we had the greatest fun!
(So much so that we will be heading out again next week, taking Kate and friend Matt across the Nullabor and back to Adelaide, and then on for a week or two to explore South Australia. That is, if I can leave my comfy bed again…)The next couple of blogs will be mainly photographic, with a bit from Nick on the roads we travelled.
Pics: Ayers Rock
Valley of the Winds, The Olgas
Domes, Valley of the Winds
Breakfast (literally) on the road
Wreck #85
No comments:
Post a Comment