Australia Red Center, Part II (photos)

20 March - 23 March

On 20 March, we woke up in Kings Canyon and headed out for a hike. We pulled up and put on our fly hats and headed out. After a bit of up and down hiking you get to a huge cliff where you can lay on your belly and look over the edge. This is the view from edge. We hiked down to a water hole and back up, carefully sticking to the trail. It was a good hike, hot and buggy, as we were accustomed to.

After Kings Canyon we drove up to Alice Springs, the largest city in the red center. We pulled in to a caravan park, set up and had pizza for dinner. My notes indicate that we boiled eggs that night.

The next morning (21 March) we got up around 5:30am and headed west of town into the West McDonnell Ranges. We hit all the sites; Simpson's Gap, Ellery Creek Big Hole, Serpentine Gorge (where we saw Rock Wallabies), the Ochre Pits and Ormiston Gorge. We skipped Stanley Chasm because they were charging for entry. We ate egg salad sandwiches for lunch.
Afterwards, we headed back into town and checked out the shopping district. We went to a jeweller and checked out their opals. We learned all about the different kinds and which are most valuable (we had already learned about them in Coober Pedy, and the stories matched). Red is the most expensive and they had some great stuff, at much better prices than in Coober Pedy or Melbourne. Dara bought (actually, I was carrying the money, so I bought it for HER) a really nice necklace that has a little speck of red in it that glints when viewed from the right angle. Then we got groceries and headed back to the caravan park for dinner. That night, I re-organized the car.

The next day, 22 March, was a big drive. We burned lotsa gas (we bought 75 liters according to my financial records, and bought more gas first thing the next morning. Since we "forgot" to pay for camping that night, our only other expense for the day was AUD$3.30 on popsicles). Days driving in the outback all meld together, but I bet we saw some dead animals and eagles and excellent clouds and listened to Neil Young Harvest and The Frames and Josh Ritter and maybe even some Velvet Underground or White Stripes. We probably talked to some people when we stopped for gas, and we probably waved at all the cars going by as is the custom to always wave when you come upon another car in the outback. But, according to my notes, this is the day the we crossed the Topic of Capricorn. As I recall, Rover was particularly excited about the event. The next major excitement of the day was reaching Wycliffe Well, which is the UFO capital of Australia. We carried on and made it to the Devil's Marbles, arriving before sunset. We parked and put on our fly hats and headed out to take some photos. The Marbles are excellent especially at sunset and sunrise. They were obviously placed there by aliens.
We saw there was a wooden platform and assumed it was there to protect from snakes or scorpians or poisonous toads or something so we put our tent on top of it. We slept pretty well except for a violent wind that caved the tent in on us, making it easy to get up to see the sunrise on the rocks. Here is our camp at sunrise. Dara didn't like the flies, but she's pretty tough.

So, 23 March, we broke camp and headed north. We passed through Tennant Creek, Elliot and Daly Waters. Then, it started to get a bit greener and we stopped in at Mataranka and had a swim in a waterhole there. From there we pressed on to Katherine, which has a big gorge which is supposed to be great to go canoeing on. The clouds were great and we made it there just around sunset. It was pretty hot, and we had crossed from dry heat to wet heat, so it was pretty uncomfortable. That night, sitting at our table, we saw flying foxes for the first time. They are huge bats and you can hear them as they slowly flap their wings. They flew by in hordes. It was pretty cool.

That same night we saw the mother and child wallabies. It was one of the highlights. The baby, more of a toddler, was hanging out eating beside its mother, and then it decided to climb into her pouch. I saw it coming and I figured it was regressing to infancy or something because it looked like it never would fit. It was amazing. I filmed it. Photos in the next entry.