Day 43-57 The Red Centre

It was finally time to make our way to the Red Centre and Alice Springs, and so we did.

This would turn out be the section of our trip where we had many misses. A dodgy SD card would be the first one and unfortunately, some photos from Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge) were lost in cyberspace.

Katherine Gorge was massive with heaps of walking tracks to choose from. We used the early morning hours (considering it was extremely hot and humid) to walk to Butterfly Gorge and enjoy a swim. It ended up being a 15.6km walk with limited stops along the way. It was well worth it, however drained all our energy. So the rest of the afternoon had to be spent in the pool.

On the road again towards Alice Springs, we stopped at Devil’s Marbels; cool rock formations that seem to have appeared from nowhere.

More then 1200kms later, we arrived in Alice Springs. So we spent few days to see what it had to offer before moving on towards Uluru, via the West MacDonnell ranges and further on Kings Canyon.

The West MacDonnell ranges comes with chasms, gorges and plently of pretty walks. It took us 3 nights including Kings Canyon to even get to Uluru.

Our second miss happened at Ellery Creek bush camping, West MacDonnell. To put it short, our awning got stuffed due to faulty handbreak...

Kings Canyon was a great stop on its own. We did the 7.2km rim walk and got awesome views of the canyon. Unfortunatly, we managed to time our visit with the public school holidays and that was quite noticable at this stage. This was also the time for our third miss… a leaking water tank.

After 3 days of beautiful gorges and walk trails, we finally reached Yulara, the only camping/resort close to Uluru, the big red rock at the very heart of Australia and the Northern Territory. Uluru did not disapoint and was even bigger than we had imagined. Unfortunately, being a famous rock like Uluru also means that you attracts tourists. And there were bus after bus with the next tour group with people and school kids. Still, it didn’t take away our impression of Uluru and its “big sister” Kata Tjuta. We did plenty of walking to explore both “rocks”, the 10.6km base walk around Uluru as well as a 7.6km walk at Kata Tjuta. And even though we had to share the area with way too many people, September still seemed to be the very best time to visit (maybe do it either before or after school holidays, not during!). The weather and temperatures were just right and wildflowers were blooming EVERYWHERE.

Once back in Alice Springs, we got the water tank sorted by Mick Murray Welding. The awning we did a quick fix with some duct tape (as we all know duct tape can fix anything).

So once again we started driving, this time towards the East Macdonnell range. First stop, Trephina Gorge. Did the Gorge walk and Panorama walk. After Trephina Gorge it was time for a history lesson by visiting the ghost mining town of Arltunga. Lots of old buildings still standing, some rebuilt others not so much.

We decided not to take the 4WD track to Ruby Gap National Park, due to the state of our car so instead we drove to Ndhala National Park and viewed some ancient rock art.

Before leaving Alice Springs, “the boss” needed some sweet TLC. So off to Alice offroad Mechanical services and Sprint muffles & Exhaust. Car was happy as were we, so we left Alice Springs and headed towards Queensland.