Blogs from Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania - page 4

An early (for us) buffet breakfast had us feeling full and ready to start the warm 39-degree day heading to Mataranka to swim at Bitter Springs. Unfortunately, a severe road fatality had happened earlier and roads in and out were closed for the day, a very sad tragedy for the town, our thoughts go out to the family and friends of the 2 women whose lives were lost and a solemn reminder to keep safe driving on the roads. We headed back to the township of Katherine to see what else to do for the day and ended up settling on going back to the Katherine Thermal Pools and spending a couple of hours there before heading back to our hotel to relax and swim in the pool. We were booked into the Nitmiluk Katherine Gorge ... read more

Today, it was totally KATA TJUKA. Located approximately 50km west of our accommodation at Yulara, Kata Tjuka means ‘many heads’ and is sacred to the local Aboriginal Anangu people. It forms an important focus of their spiritual life. The ochre-coloured shapes are an intriguing and mesmerising sight. We stopped at the dune viewing platform, still 25kms from Kata Tjuka, and viewed the large dome rock formations, of which there are 36, for an overall view. The highest dome of this sandstone monolith stands 546m above the surrounding plain. On arrival, we walked together to Karu, the first lookout on the Valley of the Winds trail, before fleet footed mountain goat Jane continued to the second lookout, Karingana, a grade 4 difficult walk. I returned to our starting point. We visited and walked a small section of ... read more

A leisurely drive from Kings Canyon to Yulara had us arrive relaxed. Along the way the scenery remained fairly constant with grassland and low scrub with spindly trees dominating after the turn off on Lasseter Highway towards Yulara. Mt Connor stood out to the south of us. Yulara came about due to the unstructured and unmonitored tourism in the early 1970’s. This was having detrimental effects on the environment surrounding both Uluru and Kata Tjuta. The town of Yulara was proclaimed a town on August 10, 1976. It is 14 km from Uluru. We are staying at the Desert Gardens Hotel for 3 nights. Tonight we ate in the restaurant and toasted our wonderful adventures.... read more

Taking the track into Palm Valley (again) we came across a dingo who then followed us for the next 5km. We had seen a dingo pup run across in front of us about 30m ahead and disappeared into the scrub. Moments later the adult dingo appeared and not seeing the pup began following us. We moved at about 5kph. When we stopped, the dingo stopped. We moved, the dingo moved. It became more confident and moved up alongside us, us on the track, the dingo a few metres in the low scrub. We took a few photos of it and enjoyed what was taking place. We stopped for 5 minutes, the dingo rested under a tree until we moved again. This all ceased when another vehicle exiting the National Park passed us. Upon reaching the campsite ... read more

Yes, this morning was extra “fresh”, -2oC felt like -5.8oC. A little replenishment of supplies, a drive-up Anzac Hill for views over Alice Springs, into town to view the sales of magnificent Aboriginal art and back to the XTRK to rest for the remainder of the day. That was day 36.... read more