Palm Valley Revisited

Well...........we finally made it into Palm Valley to see what it was like and we weren't disappointed. We left the van at the van park and headed out to see what is was like, as it turns out if I had the tyre pressures and revs right I we went too far from the camp site. Everyone was telling us that the van would not of got in there but in the end, like I said, if I had a few things right we could of made it to the camp site easy, it's getting into the valley that is a bit rough. The road from the camp site to the valley is proper 4WD.

Another lovely place in the NT, if anybody has the chance to come around this area and have a look you will be amazed, I didn't know how many beautiful spots there are here. The valley is, as the name indicates, full of cycad palms and waterholes, the walk we went on climbed the escarpment and followed the valley around. Another good walk. Have a look at the video here.



In other news, we have decided to hang around the Alice For a month or two. Some of the roads we wand to do up north are still closed and there is a race on out here called The Finke Desert Race that I have wanted to see for years. The race starts on the 11th of June and is Australia's answer to the Dakar, albeit not so long. All the vehicles are there though, the bikes, cars, buggies etc.

So we both have jobs, Tracey is working in K-Mart as a checkout chick and I have a job making beef jerky at Territory Jerky. Both jobs took us a day to get so all is good. We plan to stay until mid June then head north.

Location:Larapinta Dr,Araluen,Australia

Mereenie Loop and Palm Valley......Sort of.

We set out from Kings Canyon and headed for Hermannsburg via the Mereenie Loop comprising of 160km of dirt and corrugations. These are the worst corrugations we have ever been on and that includes doing the Simpson Desert a few years back, they were real bone rattlers! We decided to stop at one stage to check things and a couple of the tetra pack milk containers had ruptured at the bottom and were leaking through the pantry. Lesson learnt there.



The van and the car did well over the corrugations, everything in one bit, sure was a good workout of the gear though. We averaged 60km/hr over the dirt so after a few hours we arrived at Hermannsburg. Mmm....what can I say, an aboriginal community with a caravan park/camp ground in it. The problem was that you had to go get the key from the servo to get into the ground via the 8 foot fence and barbed wire surrounding it! You had to lock yourself in there for the night. We gave it a miss.

Our next adventure for the day was to go to Palm Valley in the Fink Gorge National Park, about 16km from Hermannsburg. I had read about this place on the net and put it on the list to get to as it was supposed to be beautiful, albeit a challenge to get to as the track is 4WD only.



I'm up for a challenge, the track follows a river bed into the park and we got 2/3 the way in and got bogged in a very soft sand section. The sand was so soft when you stood on it you sank a few inches. Out we get to air down the tyres even more and dig our way out. Some other campers turned up and gave me a hand and an hour later we were driving out forward and doing a u-turn and heading back out. One of the guys that turned up was a local tour guide and said the track gets worse up a bit so as I said out we went.

Lucky the guys were there to give me a hand. Bit stressful being stuck in the middle of a river bed, 6 tone of car and van up to the axles in sand and no one there. I was relieved to see a couple of cars pull up to say the least.

An eventful day to say the least eh?

We noticed a couple of camp sites on the way in so we headed for them. We found a nice spot, on hard ground, next to the river and at the base of a red cliff, this will do fine. We will stay here for a day or so and the head into Alice, 70klm, to get food and fuel and decide where to from here.

Photo below is the camp spot we have all to ourselves, we love it here.

Kings Canyon

We arrived in the caravan park at Watarrka National Park last night to find that we followed 3 busloads of school kids from Uluru, to the Olgas and to here! In minutes the pool was packed with year 10 kids and people running around everywhere. Thank goodness they were gone when we rose this morning to get out to the Canyon.



Today we headed to Kings Canyon for another walk, another fantastic place.
The Canyon was first opened up to the public by Jack Cottriell and his son Jim. They spent the summers of 1960 and 1961 building a road and a tourist business at the Canyon until the lease run out on the land 30 years later and the land was given back to the aboriginals. They then proceded not to lease the land back to the Cottriell's so Jim went and bulldozed the whole lot down and moved to Stuarts Well where he can be found running a roadhouse called "Jim's Place". We stopped in there and spoke to Jim and had a look at his photo board he has there. He is a fascinating character.

The first bit of the walk was very steep as it took you up to the rim of the Canyon. Once up, the track follows the rim and back down again. Half way there is a track to the bottom to a place called the "Garden Of Eden", as you can imagine there is a water pool there and lush vegetation. Some of the rock walls in the Canyon have wonderful colours in them and are so sheer that it looks as though someone cut the wall with a knife.



The walk took around 3 hours and we enjoyed every minute of it. Great place!




We are leaving tomorrow and heading West where we will do the Mereenie Loop, is is a dirt track that will bring us out near Hermannsburg near the West Macdonnell Ranges. We can then choose to do some more gorges along the ranges or arrow straight into Alice, stock up food and fuel and decide where to go from there. It's still pretty wet up north and we are wary about that. Either way we will let you know!! :-).

Hope everyone is well, we are having a ball! Bye for now.

The Olgas

The day after visiting the rock we headed out to have a look at the Olgas or Kata Tjuta as they are known. They lie about 50km west from Yulara and are in the same National Park.



There was a 10km walk all up in and around the Olgas and the scenery was spectacular. It's basically a collection of massive red rocks, kind of like mini Uluru's everywhere. The walk took us on a loop through the first set and out to the back for more scenery.

The weather has been kind to us here during our stay with dry days and about 30 celsius. The flys are in plague proportions at the moment and can get a little annoying, Tracey ended up wearing a fly net all day because they were so bad!



We are out of Yulara tomorrow and onto Kings Canyon, a small detour to the North West as you head back up the Lasseter Highway towards the Stuart Highway. Kings Canyon in supposed to be great as well.

Until then viewers............




Ps. As you can see I am playing with the panoramic stitching software that came with the camera. Sometimes the lens is not wide enough to capture the vastness of the scenery. Hope you like them.

The Red Center

We drove out of Chambers Pillar on the way to Uluru, free camped a couple of nights on some roadside stays and ended up getting to Yulara yesterday via the Lasseter Highway. Yulara is basically a resort town next to Uluru with the whole place set up like a resort, a few hotels, cabins, camp grounds and a caravan park, that's is where we are. There are luxury tents here with a view of the rock for $3800 for the two nights!!!!
We headed out to the rock this arvo to take the quintessential sunset shots of the place. The experience of the differing colours as the sun goes down is amazing and took a heap of photos. A great night. The next day we went to the rock again to do the base walk, a track that circumnavigates Uluru and is about 10k in length. An excellent walk that included a few detours into small gorges ( see link here on YouTube ). We wanted to climb up the rock but it was closed due to high winds up top. Most of the base walk is pretty, pity you can't take photo's. The aboriginals have signs up for about two thirds of the walk telling you not to take photos due to the place you are at being a sacred men's or women's site!! Wish they showed me the same respect when they stole gear out of my sacred site, the car! We had an excellent day today and are off to the Olgas tomorrow to do it all again :-) until then .............

Chambers Pillar With The Van

Well, we got into Chambers Pillar with the van attached as we wanted to. The climb up the range on the dirt 4WD road approaching the pillar was steep and the little Cruiser was a champion. 4WD low range and a heap of revs and 6 tone of car and caravan were up and over. We spent a couple of day at the campsite there before the clouds that were gathering spooked us into getting out of there. I didn't fancy the thought of trying to get up that range if it was wet so we decided to pack up and camp on the top of it. Before we went though, we took a few photos of the pillar at sunset to get our eye in for when we get to Uluru. The way the colours change in the landscape out here is fascinating, every minute it changes. We are now camped on the top of the range and our porch is the outback as far as the eye can see, we had a few beers tonight watching the sun set on this awesome landscape here. We have a 360 degree view of the land so whichever way you look is gorgeous. Have a look at the YouTube link here. We will stay here for another day and then make our way out though the cattle station at Mary Vale over the Finke River and then take a shortcut on the Hugh River Stock Route which will lead us to the Stuart Highway and south onto the rock. The stock route will prevent us going into Alice Springs again and save a couple of hundred Klm at the same time. Below is a photo of Trace and I when we were taking the sunset photos.
Cheers for now, catch up with you soon. Posted using IPad