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.