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Published: August 3rd 2010
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Well where were we on the last blog? Ah yes, Curtin Springs, which turned out to be a great decision on our part. We were about to pull off when two guys who had been camping next to us enquired if we were heading for The Rock, reply, Yes! Question: Would we like these two three days passes to the park, worth $50, with still two days left, guess how long it took us to say ‘Yes please’!!!
We arrived at Yalara (Ayers Rock) Resort at 10am, unhitch, make a picnic and were on our way to The Olgas by 10.45am. Oh, and by the way, did we mention what an amazing sight Uluru makes as you are driving towards the resort, even at 30km away…it is truly awesome.
We start at the Olgas some 45km from Uluru. After the picnic lunch at The Olgas we set off for the first of our two walks, ‘The Walpa Gorge Walk’ at 2.6km.
After a short car journey our second walk in The Valley of the Winds is 7.4km of walking, climbing and scrambling, taking us to the back of The Olgas, and well worth the effort. We decided not to stay
for the sunset as it has clouded over, so we drove back to the resort for a look round.
On Wednesday we rudely awake ourselves at 5.45am and by 6.45 we are off to the sunrise viewing platform. The place is packed. Again it’s a little cloudy, and very cold, so not the best sunrise seen. At 8am we leave the Uluru Cultural Centre for our 14.5km walk round the base (we could have, and wished we had, driven closer and cut 4.5km off the walk). 4 hours later we collapsed in the café back at the Cultural Centre and treated ourselves to lunch. In the evening we drove back to the national park to, guess what? Yes a sunset viewing area. Great, not many clouds so we got to see the shadows cast on Uluru.
There is a climb up Uluru but you are discouraged from doing it. We didn’t need much discouraging as it is steep and narrow (there is a rail though to help pull yourself up) and at least 5 people have died whilst attempting this.
On Friday we had another early start to our trek to King’s Canyon. We plump to stop
at King’s Creek Station some 35 km short of the actual Canyon. This is a working station owned and run by Ian Conway who we learn is a bit of a celebrity, look him up, several documentaries have been made about him. The station is getting ready to muster 2000 wild camels for export, it is estimated some 1 million wild camels roam the NT and Western Australia.
Our first impression of King’s Canyon from the base walk is of being a little under-whelmed, but since we have the time, and we made the effort to get there, we start the steep climb of the 6km rim walk. Wow, what a reward, again, our pictures do not do it justice.
Back at King’s Creek Station we have a great little site complete with our own fire surround (hole in the ground with stones round) so both nights Steve becomes a boy scout and we had great camp fires burning. We also participated in one of the nightly Stock Camp Shows.
We are only going to say this once in this blog, but these are a must do for your bucket list. Look at the pics, but let us
tell you none of them do these justice, you have to be standing right next to them to truly appreciate the wonder of these 3 sites. And we totally disagree with anyone who says Uluru is just “a big red rock”.
We leave this blog as we head back for Alice Springs via a stopover at Erldunda, having had a cold but fantastic week in Central Australia. Our journey back starts with 65km driven before seeing another vehicle, but what we did see were two wild brumbies, a dingo trotting down the road in the opposite direction, 3 wild camels (one was nearly good looking) 2 wedge tail eagles having breakfast on cold kangaroo meat, and a traveller who has the rear end of some vehicle hitched to 2 camels.
See you all for our next thrilling blog
Thought
If you take a Viagra and an anti-inflammatory, will it reduce the swelling?????
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Wendy
non-member comment
Not sure about the viagra and anti-inflammatory but I'm sure Steve will try it just to find out!! Loving the blogs so keep them coming. Wendy