Roadtrip - Uluru and Kata Tjuta

Kings Canyon

Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park is 450 odd kilometers from Alice Springs and you get to make 2 right turns to get there, woohoo. The drive was spiced up a little as the size of our potential roadkill increased significantly. We were no longer in fear of hitting a kangaroo or emu, NO, the stakes had been raised to cattle, horses and camels. Yes, you read that correctly, camels! Explorers of central Australia used camels on their expeditions as they are built to withstand desert conditions. Some of these expeditions failed or the animals simply ran away and now there are thousands of camels free in the deserts of Australia.

A fire that was directly next to the road

At Kings Canyon we walked the rim, it began with a challenging 500-step climb up the side of the canyon. It was worth every step, 6km in just over 2 hours and as the sun rose further and further into the sky the colours of the rock just kept on changing. We got to see all sorts of rock, a pooping lizard and some incredibly ancient plants in the Garden of Eden.  Since that walk wasn’t enough we then did the 2.6 km Kings Creek Walk tracing the bottom of the gorge. It was recommended that we finish the walks by 10am or else it would be too hot and the risk of heat stroke and injury is significantly greater. Whilst we didn’t see a dingo out in the wild (Dinky the singing dingo doesn’t count) we did get to enjoy listening to them howl and bark at night whilst we enjoyed a quiet cold beer or 2.

Pooping lizard

High risk walking conditions

Uluru

Next we went to Anangu land (the local indigenous community’s name) which is home to Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. Our first glimpse of Uluru was midafternoon when it was surrounded by heat haze.  This didn’t last long as a small short storm cleared the afternoon air and changed the colour of the rock.

We met up with a Ranger at the base of the rock in the morning and during a walk along part of it we listened and learned about indigenous culture at Uluru. When you look at the photo, do you see a mans head and face or a picture of a brain?

Mans face?? or Human brain??

Culturally this is a man looking south to where his family was hiding in safety. There are lots of local stories about why Uluru looks the way it does and it was interesting to learn some of them. After the Rangers walk The House of Spaz walked around the entire 10km base of Uluru (with respect to the local owners we didn’t climb it). It was a long and hot walk, we each drank over 3 liters of water in just over 2 ½ hours but it was incredible. The colour of the rock, the sky, the trees was awesome!The storm in the afternoon made The other Spaz think that the rock looked like it had snow on it but Spaz thought that it was just reflecting the colour of the clouds (so unimaginative ((or logical, have your pick)).

Rain jacket at the rock!

Waterfalls :-)

Looks like snow has fallen on it

Awesome sunset

Kata Tjuta 

After the base walk we headed over to Kata Tjuta to have lunch and walk into the Valley of the Kings. The other Spaz was hot and bothered and not in the mood to walk into the first lookout (track was closed after that due to high temperatures) so we drove a round a little then retreated back to the pool. Whilst sitting by the pool we watched a MASSIVE storm front come towards us. It was 3 monsoons coming together. It rained for over an hour (what the Ranger told us was needed to see waterfalls at Uluru) so we got in the car. It was amazing to be wearing our rain jackets at Uluru and to see waterfalls running down and off the rock where only 5 hours earlier, the other Spaz was suffering with the heat. After speaking to a few locals we learned that this was a once in a year phenomenon and we got to see it :-) We then stayed to watch sunset at Uluru and we were treated to rainbows over the rock :-)

Magical! And for The other Spaz THE highlight of the trip!

The red center

Dirt?? or Suntan??

Roadtrip - The long drive to Alice

On the way to Alice Springs

So where is the UFO capital of Australia? Australia has its own little version of Roswell, didn’t you know? Well the answer is Wycliffe Well. The only highway between Darwin and Alice Springs has a handful of small townships along it and these all compete for people to stop, either for fuel or a room for the night. There is no need to stop for any other reason (except maybe for some chocolate milk, that’s another story) so many small townships have become creative in ways of luring suckers (like The other Spaz) to stop. We stopped! We saw no aliens! So with an ice-cream each and a postcard and stubby holder we left Wycliffe Well.

A little further down the road we ran into the Australian Army on the move, well not the entire army but a very LARGE tank and some type of armored personnel carrier.  We got to overtake this very wide load a couple of times as we stopped at interesting places like Wycliffe Well, Tennant Creek and the Devil’s Marbles.

The Devil’s Marbles are a wonder. These were incredibly large rocks in the middle of a dessert. We explored the marbles, saw a lizard, the remains of an old truck and the skeleton of a cow. A fire had recently been through the area making it feel a little bit eerie.

 Alice Springs was a sight for sore eyes, and sore legs and a numb bottom. It was a reallllllllly long drive getting there but it was a great place to stop for the night. Since the House of Spaz are fans of Bill Bryson and we had reread his book ‘Down Under’ before we left, we decided to follow his advice and to go and visit the Alice Springs Desert Park. This is where they have recreated three different types of desert habitats and display the flora and fauna of them. It was great for us as it gave us the names of the birds we had seen and were about to see (some very closely as the bounced off the car, … another story).

Roadtrip - Elliott

A little town called Elliott, NT

Do you know where this is? The other Spaz had never heard of it and she is from Oz. I think we shall officially say that this is in the middle of butt fuck nowhere! So why did we stop in the middle of butt fuck nowhere??? Glad you asked as there is a story to tell…….

The calm before the storm

Since it was the start of the wet season there are hundreds of storms over the Northern Territory and many of these storms start bushfires. There are numerous safety tips when exploring central Australia but the two most important driving tips are to avoid driving at dawn and dusk as animals don’t know the road rules and secondly drive away from fires not towards them. So we broke both of these rules, dusk was settling in and the fire on the horizon looked to be getting closer to the road as we headed towards it. The other Spaz decided that the next town would be where the car was going to be parked for the evening, that town ended up being Elliott.

What a special place Elliott is. There was a pub, a gas station and a caravan park and the main street was full with ‘locals’ out for a walk. Since we had a tent we headed to the caravan park, but the poor caravan park was a dirt wasteland that hadn’t been cared for since 1970 and since our tent wasn’t stab proof or people proof we decided that it might be safer to ‘get a room’ at the pub. Well we got a room for $60, quite cheap really, that should have had the alarm bells ringing. Our room was a real treat. The door was unlocked when we got to it and the handle would have come off the door with a good twist. The entrance way was full of dust and leaves that had blown under then door, there was grass growing in the carpet and the basin in the bathroom came with a pair of eyes. Please vote on whether you think it is a frog or a lizard as we are currently split 50/50. The air-conditioner worked but we woke up in fear in the middle of the night when the ceiling fan started to rock and shake like it was going to fall off the roof.

The entrance was so very inviting

Grass on the wrong side of the door

Frog? or Lizard? either way it shouldn't be in the bathroom sink

Once we were … err … ‘settled’ in our room we headed to the bar for a well-deserved beer. The fires were pretty large and pretty close to town by this stage as the sky and air were full of smoke, even in the bar. Whilst the accommodation was a little neglected and the publican wasn’t the chattiest publican in the desert, we can recommend the food at the pub. Unfortunately they had run out of cheese so we couldn’t have the chicken parma but the chicken with mushroom sauce was still a winner.

Roadtrip - Litchfield / Katherine

Litchfield
On the drive to Litchfield we got to see a massive piece of uranium mining equipment being moved. It was so big that it took up more than 1 lane on the road. (It’s a small two lane road to begin with …) We also mistakenly thought that we could stop in little townships such as Palm Creek, or slightly bigger townships, like Adelaide River to restock, proving that we were foolish naïve tourists! They were … small. Adelaide River was home to the Commonwealth war graves and a rather deadly green poisonous spider that made Spaz move very very quickly.

A brine washer being transported to the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu

In Litchfield we saw two types of termite mounds, cathedral and magnetic. The cathedral ones were HUGE, taller than Spaz and the magnetic ones were cool as they were flat, built north south to limit the amount of sun exposure. The little rain that fell in the afternoon lulled us into thinking that we weren’t going to get a storm but we were WRONG!!!!

Magnetic termite mounds

Cathedral termite mound

Due to the high heat and humidity plus the sleeping in a tent = little and disturbed sleep each night, so we decided that we would ‘get a room’ in Litchfield so that we could fully recharge, sleep well and eat well. We couldn’t have timed this decision any better than we did ... as in Litchfield we got to observe our 2^nd massive monsoon storm. This storm was BIG!! The rain fell heavily for over 2 hours and the electrical storm lasted for nearly 4 hours, taking the power out a few times. We sat inside and watched as the poor kangaroos in the paddocks outside our door tried to keep their backs to the storm.

Australians are shorter than Swedes

Skippy the bush kangaroo

The next day the waterfalls were flowing beautifully, Florence falls was a lovely double waterfall but was very crowded so we went off to Wangi falls for a swim. Finally a place where we could swim, heaven. The water was so clean and so warm that we didn’t want to get out, we could have stayed there forever, alas there was a long drive ahead of us.

Florence falls

Wangi falls

Katherine

Katherine was an eye opener and we weren’t even there on a Thursday (pension day). The ‘locals’ in town sure made their presence felt, very noisy! We visited Nitmiluk National Park and Katherine Gorge. Unfortunately the lookout walk was closed and the canoes had all been hired so we took the river cruise past the rock faces and cliffs and it was stunning. On the cruise we saw a crocodile cage in the river and its door was shut. On the way back downstream the tour boat driver went close to see what it was, thankfully it was just a 1.5m freshwater crocodile so it was safe for the House of Spaz to enter the water and have a swim after the cruise. (Freshwater crocs ain’t nothing to worry about ... MOST of the time.) Again, the water was so refreshing, clean and warm and we didn’t want to get out.

A lone tree