Since the last blog we have travelled many kilometres, by air and by land.
After leaving Tumby Bay, we stopped just out of Port Gibbon. North of the the little township there were a few beach access tracks, and we took one of these, having the spot all to ourselves. We were pretty much right on the beach, but it was quite cool and we ended up indoors for the evening. The morning had us walking along the beach.
Our campsite near Port Gibbon
From here we headed to Whyalla and the cheapest fuel we had seen for some time. Our stop that night was at Port Lowly, just north of there. It's a low cost camp that is very popular. But South Australia hasn't been kind to Jim and his fishing endeavours.
It was now nearly time for us to fly to Melbourne. We had organised to leave the van at the Crystal Brook Caravan Park, and we spent two nights there before the two hour drive to Adelaide and leaving our car at Andrews Parking.
We had a lovely time in Melbourne catching up with the family. Karen and Scott flew down for the weekend so it was fantastic to have all the kids and partners together. Of course spending quality time with grandson Jack was also a highlight. We also took the opportunity to spend a day at Corinella to reassess whether we still wanted to build on our block of land. We had been thinking that we weren't keen to go through the hassles and issues of building. We organised to look at four houses there, and when we entered the third house, we both felt that it was right. We put in an offer with a long settlement which suited both us and the vendors, and settlement is early November. So I have had my nomad wings well and truly clipped.
Our time in Melbourne went fast and it was soon time to fly back to Adelaide. Our early morning flight was good timing, getting us in to Adelaide around 9.30. We had also arranged for the car to be serviced while we were gone, so another bonus. Once we had picked the car up we headed to the closest supermarket for a big shop up before the two hour trip back to the caravan.
Our kitchen mixer tap had started dripping a few weeks before and we had tried replacing the cartridge which didn't help. We had also bought another tap just in case, but when Jim went to fit it he didn't have the tool required. So we rang a local plumber who was supposed to come the night before we left. He didn't show so we left the van keys with the park manager. While away we had tried ringing the plumbing company, mainly to tell them that they could switch on the pump to test it, but hadn't got an answer.
When we got back we were told that the plumber had come the following Monday. So we moved the van back onto a site, hooked up the power and water and before starting to unload the car, I thought I better ring the plumbing place before they closed to find out how to pay. She had barely answered when I suddenly felt water on my feet, and looked down to discover water pouring out of the cupboard. The plumber had cross threaded the hot water connection and not knowing about the pump hadn't been able to check for leaks. Just what I needed after a long day of travel, and we still hadn't unpacked anything from the car. I had to drag everything out of the affected cupboards and try to dry things out. And of course we couldn't reconnect the water so it was over in the cold to the caravan park showers the next morning. Anyway, as we were madly trying to disconnect the water, the girl on the phone immediately said someone would be there first thing the next morning. And at eight he duly arrived and corrected the problem.
Even with this mishap we still managed to get on the road by ten. Our first stop was not far down the road at Port Pirie where we filled up with fuel and a little last minute shopping. Another short trip and we stopped at Port Germaine. We hadn't been here before. It's claim to fame is the very long jetty, and it took quite a while to walk the whole way out and back. We were intrigued with the home made boat launcher designed to overcome the extreme tides here. By now it was lunchtime so we had this at the lovely foreshore area.
Interesting boat launcher
Walking back from the end of the very long jetty
No more procrastinating, time to hit the road seriously. There's a lot of kilometres to travel. That day we made it about 100 kilometres north of Port Augusta and stopped a few hundred metres back behind a rest area. No one else around and and a lovely quiet night. We lit a fire and it was a beautiful sunset.
Stuart Highway camp
The next night we stopped at a very large open area a few kilometres out of Coober Pedy. Quite a few others there as well, but such a large area everyone was well spaced out. We weren't too interested in Coober Pedy having been there before, so a fuel fill up was enough and we were on the road again.
Camping just out of Coober Pedy
As often happens, you keep running in to the same people each time you stop. We meet a nice couple when we stopped for coffee at Glendambo and each time we stopped, they seemed to be there too. They had actually wanted to stop where we had outside Cooper Pedy, but missed the turn off. After leaving Cooper Pedy our lunch stop was Marla and we came across them again. Our plan for the night was a spot at the NT/SA border, but opposite the official bitumen one. After arriving and setting up, we crossed over to the official stop to look at the posters and information there. As I was about to cross the road, along came our couple, so I was able to direct them into the almost hidden roadway.
Just after I crossed the road, I heard a loud bang, and hoped they hadn't run into anything, although I could not remember anything of any size that would be a problem. When we returned to our camp spot, we discovered they had circled around our van, and run over a tree stump that was sitting up. The bang I heard was the tyres deflating. Jim helped him get the van jacked up, and the first tyre off had a huge hole. We hoped that the second had just been pulled off the rim, but it also had a huge hole.
While all this was going on, another van came in, and I looked up and saw that his Trail Mate jack was dragging on the ground. We hailed him down, but he had already damaged the connection, so a lot of hammering ensued. Then the friends they were travelling with finally arrived, and they had had a flat tyre about 20 kilometres down the road. This made 3 out of 4 vans with serious problems and we were the only ones unscathed. We decided to check everything well the next day. Our new friends decided that as it was less than 20 kilometres to Kulgera, they would head in to see if they could purchase two new tyres. They returned after dark, but with two tyres, so they were happy to solve their problem relatively easily considering how isolated things are.
We farewelled them the next morning with our goal being Yulara. We stopped at Mt Ebenezer for fuel and a break, had lunch at Curtain Springs and made Yulara by mid afternoon. I had booked when I had phone service, and had taken up their offer of pay three stay four. There was quite a bit we hadn't done on our previous visit many years ago, so felt it would be easy to fill in time.
Late afternoon we walked in to the town area, on our return arriving at one of the town lookouts just on dusk for a sunset over Uluru. The next morning after some washing catchup, we headed out with lunch on board. After paying for our pass, we stopped at the Cultural Centre. This had certainly grown since our last trip. It was then on to Uluru where we had decided that climbing was not for us, but the 10.6 walk around the base sounded good. I had done this with Karen previously, but this track was a lot longer as they had moved the track a long way from the rock and there were many sites that had now been deemed of cultural importance that we no longer had access to. The walk took about three hours and it was a pleasant time of year to be walking.
Different views of Uluru
The next day we again packed lunch and drove the 50 kilometres to Kata Tjuta stopping at a sunset viewing area that hadn't been there last time. It gave some beautiful views. We decided we were up to the challenge and did the full circuit of 7.6 kilometres at Valley of the Winds. We had lunch when we reached the lookout, and enjoyed this shady spot with inspiring views. What comes up must go down, and it had been a steep climb to this point, so a steep track down. From here the track was mostly flat until coming back into the original track to complete our loop. Still coping well, we headed back to Walpa Gorge where we completed another 2.6 k walk.
Beautiful lunch view at Kata Tjuta
The walk at Walpa Gorge
Our last day at Yulara we decided would be a rest day after all that walking! Some more washing catchup, some shopping and a walk around the town filled our day up.
Thursday morning we got underway early looking to get to Kings Canyon by lunch. We had a break at Salt Creek Rest Area. There was no one else there when we arrived, but if we had walked over the sand dune it would have been quite different as there was a real drama playing out.
Kings Canyon being so isolated is quite expensive for what you get, so I only booked one night to see if we could fit everything in. The first site they gave us we couldn't fit into, so as the phones don't work, I had to hoof it back a distance to the reception. We were lucky get another site that was in the front row with great views, only vastly bigger in size. After a quick bite of lunch we made our way to the canyon. The rim walk is 6.5 kilometres and we knew the first 100 metres is a very steep climb with 500 steps. We were buoyed when we got to the top and the sign up there said the rest of the walk was leisurely. No it was not. I expected it to be mostly flat because of that sign, but discovered the track went up and down, and we even had to climb up and down some very steep steps. But the views and scenery are amazing. We completed the walk in 2 3/4 hours, including the detour to the Garden of Eden.
We have seen toilet paper strewn all around Australia, cut can't work out how it got here.
People on the other edge of the canyon
Pool at the end of the Garden of Eden walk, and part of the Garden of Eden
Some of the steps to the Garden of Eden
On the way out, looking at the sheer walls below where we had been walking.
That really only left the walk through the bottom of the canyon, an easy flat walk. There was plenty of van parking there, so we decided to hook up in the morning, park the van there and complete that walk.
The view at the end of the bottom walk
We had been warned not to leave any shoes outside while at Kings Canyon as the dingoes were known to make off with them. That night as it got dark, we heard them howling. We had heard dingoes many times before, but perhaps not so many of them howling together.
It was around eleven when we left the canyon after our walk the next morning, so we stopped again at the Salt Creek Rest Area for lunch. But when we arrived it was so different from the day before. There were a lot of cars, vans and activity there, and then we noticed police cars as well. As I started to make lunch, we heard a helicopter approaching and were amazed when it landed in the rest area. We discovered that the previous morning a couple who were camped over the dunes had gone for a walk. The wife decided to go further but failed to return. This would have all been around the time we were there the day before. She was one lucky lady, as we followed the news and discovered after being missing for two nights, she was discovered at 3 pm on the Saturday, dehydrated but unhurt. The country out here is not to be trifled with.
Rescue helicopter about to land
We stopped at a roadside rest area on the highway that night, continuing to Alice Springs the next morning, where we stayed in the Showgrounds for three nights. Apart from some much needed grocery shopping, there were a few things I wanted to do that I had missed out on last time. One of these was the Pioneer Womens Museum housed in the old gaol. We also attended the Beanie Festival which ran for three days. We were there the morning of the third day, and were amazed to hear a worker tell another that at that stage they had sold $36,000 worth of beanies! And they still had a whole day to go. Instead of a beanie I did buy some beautiful coloured home spun wool. The Beanie Festival started off as local knitters, but now the beanies come from all around the country.
Early Tuesday saw us hooking up again and heading out to the West McDonnell Ranges. On a previous trip we had not had enough time to explore further out, so a night camped out there gave us plenty of time. We chose Ellery Creek Big Water Hole. A look around there, an early lunch, and we were back in the car to explore further afield. We went to the furthest point I had chosen, Redbank Gorge. This was a good half hour each way walk in over sand and large rocks. They suggest taking lilos to paddle through the gorge, as the water here is one of the coldest water holes around. I walked in to my ankles and my feet went numb. Jim being somewhat crazy, donned his bathers as he thought he might be able to swim up a little and get a good view of the gorge. Although wading out a little way, it was way too cold for him and he eagerly returned to the bank and a change into dry clothes. The weather that day was amazing, about 26 and beautiful sunshine.
Ellery Creek Big Hole
Redbank Gorge
The very cold waters of Redbank Gorge
From here we then went to Mt Sonder Lookout and then the walk to Glen Helen Gorge. Next stop was Ormiston Gorge, but by this stage it was around four, so getting too late to do any of the longer walks, so we just walked the gorge bottom. When we arrived at Ormiston, we first went to the little cafe. How it survives way out there I don't know. We bought an icecream just to show some support. He asked if we were going to be in the Northern Territory for a little while, as the Parks people had just given him their new booklet displaying all the parks and reserves in the Territory. I happily took the copy he offered me.
Ormiston Gorge
It was around five when we got back to our camp. When we had been at the waterhole in the morning, one girl in a group had lost a ring and gave up trying to find it. Jim pulled out his metal detector, which has only been used a few times as we mostly tend to forget it. In the first few seconds he found a $2 coin. We never found the ring, but our tally for about half an hour was $2.10, numerous bottle and can tops and what looked like quite an old earring. Alas we couldn't find its pair.
I had thought about another night at Ellery Creek, but reading through the Park book I discovered Arltunga Heritage Reserve. As the park campsites are from midday to midday, I worked out we could easily cover the things we had missed the day before. It was sunny although a little cool when we got up, so we donned our shorts but with jackets. By the time we drove out the sun was gone and clouds had rolled in. The disadvantage of no internet to check the weather.
But we soldiered on and saw the Ochre Pits, the remains of the Serpentine Chalet, a tourist venture that failed after only ten years, and then we did the walks at Serpentine Gorge. Firstly we went to the water hole at the entrance to the gorge, then we did the steep walk to the viewpoint at the top. Very rewarding.
Some of the beautiful colours at the Ochre Pits
Serpentine Gorge
And the view into the gorge from the top. Well worth the climb
View from the opposite direction
We were packed and out of the campground by the designated time of midday, stopping not far down the road for lunch. A quick refuel at Alice and we were heading east to Trephina Gorge. There are three campgrounds here, with one of them designated for caravans. It was probably the worst designed campground we have been in, obviously put together by someone who has never driven a caravan. Fortunately it wasn't too busy and we managed to get one of probably only two we would fit in. There was just time for a quick walk through the gorge before dinner.
Pretty outlook as the sunset on the rocks from our campsite
The next morning we were up early and heading to Arltunga Historical Reserve by eight. This was quite a beautiful drive of about 45 minutes, most of it on dirt road. Firstly we called into the information centre, spending about an hour finding out the history of the place, watching a video that was very good, and taking some info sheets to find our way around. The reserve is quite large, with a number of places to look at. There are still many old ruins left, as well as a lot of the mine shafts. This is one of very few mining places that encourage you to take a torch and climb through the mines. Firstly we had to climb four metres down a ladder then crouch our way through the shaft to come out at the other ladder to climb back up again.
One of the original houses. Many of the buildings have been reroofed to protect them
The Government Works area
Climbing down into the mine
Making our way through
The small opening we had to crawl through to get out the other side.
One of two cemeteries. Unusual fenced in grave. You can just see the headstone.
A round house.
Inside the opening to the Great Western Mine, a company owned mine.
View looking out over the countryside from the outside of the mine.
We ended up spending four and a half hours at the reserve, and still didn't manage to fit all the walks in. It certainly gave us an idea of how difficult their lives must have been in the 1890's in this place that is so remote and so lacking in water. They couldn't sluice to separate the gold as there wasn't the water, so they had to dry blow it.
The cost of getting goods and food in was very high due to the difficulty of carting it in. No one who mined here came away rich unfortunately, so much hard work for very little.
On the way back to Trephina, we stopped at the largest ghost gum in Australia
Getting back mid afternoon gave us time to do the rim gorge walk, beautiful views again and a lovely walk,
View of Trephina Gorge from the rim walk.
There was still another walk I wanted to do, the Panorama Walk, so we decided to do that first thing in the morning before leaving. We were walking by eight. The sign on the info board said the walk was an hour, 30 metres down at the start of the walk it said 90 minutes. Hmm. In the end we did it under 45 minutes, including lots of stops for photos. This was a looong way up, and we were very pleased with how easily we managed, so our fitness levels must be coming back with our Central Australia walks.
View from the Panorma Walk
Looking down on our campsite
So we ended up ahead of schedule, driving out at around 9.30. We had scouted out where we could park the van so we could do some last minute grocery shopping, and with some more refuelling (probably our biggest expense with these isolated places and long distances) we were on the road heading north.
We ended up stopping at the McDouall Stuart Memorial around 200 ks north of Alice. Nothing much there apart from the memorial and a few tables, but by the end of the night it was fairly full.
Phone reception had been patchy to non existent, and within about twenty minutes of driving the next morning, as we got a signal again, messages and missed calls came in. Jim's eldest sister was not good and they thought failing fast. This made us reassess our travel plans.
We had stopped at Barrow Creek to make the phone calls, but we would have probably stopped anyway as there is quite a bit of history here. There is a very well preserved Telegraph Station, perhaps the largest we have seen in our travels. We also discovered from another tourist that it was not far from here that Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees were kidnapped. Of course they have never found his body although someone was convicted of his murder. This mystery has inspired a number of shows and movies, including Wolf Creek.
The original plan had been to travel to the Devils Marbles to spend the night. I had heard there was free wifi there, so thought this might be useful to keep us in touch. However, when we got there we discovered the wifi was at the day area, quite a walk from the campground. After doing a few walks around the boulders, we made the decision to have lunch and move on to where we would have phone service. This meant another hundred kilometres to Tennant Creek. More fuel and we drove about sixteen kilometres out of town to The Pebbles, a sort of mini Devils Marbles. This meant that we had now intersected with our travels from last year, as we stopped here before heading north to Darwin.
A huge rock split cleanly in half
But for us this time it was a turn to the east. I hadn't planned on long days, but to get back into phone coverage we needed to cover a fair distance. We chose Camooweal Billabong, another place we had stopped at last year, as a good place to aim for as the phone coverage there is good. It was on the leg between Barkly Homestead and Camooweal that we had our closest call yet. In our four years of travel we have been very lucky, and I guess we were even luckier this time.
The road is straight and reasonably flat. There was a medium size truck heading towards us when about 300 metres from us he veered completely into our lane. I could see that his front tyre had completely exploded. He did a great job to correct the truck and get back to his side, but we were showered with bits of rubber and tyre material.
Fortunately Jim wasn't going too fast, and started slowing down as soon as he saw what was happening. We knew there was another van just behind us, and had to hope that they were on the ball and didn't run up our backsides. We could only think what a difference just a few seconds could have made.
After that it was an uneventful run to Camooweal Billabong which despite the huge numbers of caravans, we were surprised to get a great water front site mid afternoon. Maybe someone had just left. After so much travel it was time for some exercise. We decided to walk into the town and ended up at the pub. While having our one drink, we met a very interesting couple. They had a relocation campervan at a steal of $1 a day that they were taking to Darwin. They were then going to pick up their boat and bring it back down the coast to Townsville.
We enjoyed talking to them so much, we lost a little track of the time, and not having torches with us knew we didn't have a great deal of time to do the 20 - 30 minute walk before it was dark. It was a bit of a sprint back but we made it.
The next morning I had another of those great (crazy?) ideas where I thought rather than unhook the car we would walk to the Drovers Camp, a museum dedicated to the early cattle drovers. It was a bit hard to work out the distance, and after a brisk walk of 45 minutes we made what we thought was the tour by five minutes. However as there had been a large group already there, he had started early. We were able to tack on and by the time he finished, others had turned up so we got to hear what we had missed out on. It was an interesting place and he certainly knew what he was talking about. Of course that way of life stopped with the large cattle trucks.
Walking back we took a more leisurely pace, stopping in the town for a look around and getting back to the van for a late lunch. That evening we enjoyed another beautiful sunset just as we remembered from our first time there the previous year.
Sunset at Camooweal
We had been in contact with Jim's family, and despite all predictions his sister was holding on. We decided to get within reach of Mt Isa where he could fly to Melbourne from. We stopped on Tuesday at an excellent rest area about 50 kilometres out of Mt Isa. There were lots of others there, which wasn't surprising as it was a great spot with huge areas to camp in. It was here in the afternoon that we got news that Jim's sister had passed away. We decided our best option was to head to a caravan park in Mount Isa the next morning. Fortunately another camper had come over for a chat, and she mentioned she was going to ring and book a site as she had heard it was busy being school holidays. I hadn't considered this, so immediately rang. Lucky I did as I got the last possible site that could fit us.
When we arrived at 10.30 the next morning, the 'no powered sites' sign was out, and has been out ever since. Our site is right next to the ladies ablutions, which might be handy if I didn't have an ensuite, but it does mean when we are outside we hear the showers and toilets flushing, but it is a big site so we aren't complaining. With our shade wall up we have plenty of privacy.
Jim flew out lunchtime Friday, and I am here holding the fort until his return next Tuesday evening.
