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Published: August 30th 2009
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Day 122 - Yulara to Kings Canyon
Last night we’d introduced ourselves to the new family camped behind us, well more accurately we’d complemented them on their dog which sort of started the conversation. The German Shepherd was beautiful and it turned out that she was a fully trained assistance dog for the young lady owner who was travelling with her family. We chatted for a while and then left them to the rest of their evening. We heard them outside for a short time and then as the night progressed things went quiet. Then morning arrived, well, I say morning but we reckon it was 5.30am if that and all hell was breaking loose! What a row, no need for the alarm clock again today!
Awoken from our slumber we gave sunrise one more shot! Off we sped to Uluru and the sunrise viewing area but this time we didn’t drive the really long way round where you have to pick your way through the crowds, oh no. We drove towards the Mala Walk entrance and the base of the climb to reach a section where there was virtually nobody, just the family of photographers that we’d met
yesterday! It’s a small place this National Park of 1325 square kms! We laughed as a Butcherbird decided to get really friendly and firstly sat at the bottom of our tripod and then landed on the rung of the tripod on the top of the Italians campervan! None of us could get a proper pic!! The lovely Italian family are also travelling to Kings Canyon later today so we very much hope we’ll bump into them again.
The sunrise is lovely to watch, again, but all too soon it’s time we should be thinking about heading for camp and the next destination. We wave goodbye to the photography family, who by now are on the roof of the van in full swing, and wave goodbye to Uluru. It’s been great and we’ve had a fantastic trip here.
It doesn’t take us long to pack up and we’re on the road well before 9am with a 4 hour journey ahead of us. Not much to tell about the journey, the roads are good but they’re not very wide so over-taking slower vehicles has to be done precisely. We pass by the Earnest Giles Road which is a quicker route
for us to take back towards Alice but the sign says 4WD only and the 4WD bit is underlined so it doesn’t look like we’ll be doing that with the caravan! We come to the small community of Kings Creek and stop to top up the fuel tank, I’ve got used to not looking at the cost for the time being because we don’t have a lot of choice being out in the red centre! There’s a camp site here but to be honest it’s still a fair way until you get to Kings Canyon where all the interesting walks are so we’re happy to be booked into the caravan park at the resort.
It’s funny really because there’s nothing, building wise, other than ‘the resort’ in Kings Canyon. Another place that was built to service the ‘local attraction’ we guess, shame there’s no National Park camping here though as that would have been excellent. Booking in takes a while, seemingly lots of paperwork but soon enough at a cost of $36 per night we’ve got our camp pitch and the caravan is settled in to a nice spot under the trees.
We’re soon joined by Carol and
Ray who park up next door completely by accident! We’d first met them at the Mt Conner lookout on our way to Uluru. We had a quick scout around the park, found the swimming pool and the laundry then wandered up to the general store which has all sorts in there for sale! Most interestingly we found a couple of books which we might have to purchase for fellow bloggers Kangaroojack! Andy has a passion for Wombats and we found two fantastic books for him, the first is called Wombat Stew Cookbook and the second is The Diary of a Wombat. Both are hilarious reads and keep me very entertained whilst Darryl is searching for washing up liquid!
Back in the campsite Tony and Jane have arrived too so we give them time to get organised and then descend! Jane shows us the photos of her grand-daughter Chia, who is just stunning at the age of four, and photos of her two daughters, also both beautiful.
We happened to mention how much we were missing the more traditional camp sites where you can have camp fires and there’s no power and Jane said they’d been thinking about staying
somewhere between here and Alice Springs to break up the journey. She’d already looked in the Camps 5 book and found Finke River Rest Area which has toilets and is beside the ‘river’ so should have a nice outlook. I just wondered whether the ‘river’ will actually have any water in it!! It sounds a good idea breaking up the journey and would give us the opportunity to cook up a stew and some stick bread, oh and not forgetting the Australia famous ‘Banana Tim Tam’ for desert! It means we have to change our booking at the Alice Springs site but I suspect it won’t be a problem so I’ll ring them tomorrow.
It’s our turn to host ‘happy hour’ so we return to our caravan to get the nibbles ready and shout over to Carol and Ray if they want to join the four of us. We had a visit from the female half of the camp site entertainers the ‘Roadies’ who invites all of us along to the Outback BBQ area between 7.30 and 9 for some music. The six of us settled nicely into chatting about one thing and another, we watched the dingoes roaming
around, sunset came and went, I read the poem “Caravan Bliss” to them (which you can find on the
Bloggers poet society, Ray took the rip out of Dar’s warm beers and the evening flowed merrily along until about quarter to nine when we had to give in and get some dinner! We had a ball tonight guys, thanks very much for your company and we’ll look forward to the Rim walk in the morning!
Dinner consisted of reheated Thai Green Curry, which is just as delicious as it was when fresh! We watched the dingoes still pacing around camp, they get really cheeky and you’re advised to put everything away including shoes! I can just imagine a dingo trotting down the track with my size 6 walking boots on his front paws and Darryl’s size 10’s on the back paws! There are even metal gates in front of the toilet blocks to keep them out of there too!
Dar is falling asleep whilst I’m typing this so I guess it’s time for bed!
Speak to you all soon, take care
Dar and Sar
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