We came in at four in the morning, and arrived at the Poinciana Inn at 5h30. The friendly lady at the reception let us already check in to our room without any extra charge. We appreciated that very much! After a well-deserved nap, we got up at 9h30 (we had set the alarm to 7h30, but didn’t hear it, strangely enough) and spent our first day Down Under with strolling through Darwin’s Smith Street Mall, hanging out in Bicentennial Park and taking another nap in the afternoon. Being used to the mostly grey skies of Brussels, the sun burning down from an ever so blue sky had us squinting our eyes despite wearing sunglasses.

The most important thing this morning was good, strong coffee, and we got it at our hotel’s buffet breakfast bar. A taxi took us to Kea Camper Rentals to pick up our Landcruiser campervan. Günther, the bloke in charge, is originally from Germany. He’s planning to move down south, as he can’t stand the heat during the Wet any longer. Our car’s beaut, except for one of the drawer’s opening ‘automatically’ in right-hand bends. We’ll have to fix that somehow, otherwise we’ll have our cutlery going on walkabout all over our van.

The Casuarina Shopping Square provided us with the necessary goodies for the next couple of days. We then decided rather spontaneously to drive out to Berry Springs and spend the night at the Tumbling Waters Cara Park, which we still remember well from our trip in 1999.

Sadly, not one wallaby paid us a visit this time (see our travel yarn 1999), although we were on the same site as three years ago.

Claudia had quite a bad night, she caught a cold in the air conditioned planes and Singapore airport.

Torsten had pity on Claudia (who was sneezing and wheezing the whole day, using two rolls of kitchen paper towels) and drove almost the whole 784 km alone. We taped the self-opening drawer with band aids and then later on with sturdy cloth tape which we bought in Katherine. It’s as good as Duct Tape, which served us well last year on our broken windshield and the broken chair.

We also used this year’s tape for Torsten’s bed – it is made of 3 wooden boards that are put up in the popped-up roof of the car. As they did not built in any stoppers, those boards shifted with Torsten’s every movement. To stop him from falling down on unsuspecting Claudia (who sleeps ‘downstairs’) during the night, we taped two of the boards together. It worked perfectly well. We also had to buy a hammer for setting up the awning.

The drive itself was uneventful; we saw quite a lot of kites. A middle-aged couple drove around in their rented Britz Explorer campervan and didn’t notice that the door of their gas bottle compartment was not closed and merrily banged against the side of their campervan.

The campsite at Renner Springs Roadhouse is basic, but very nice. At 8h30, a lot of road trains were still passing by and pulling out.

Now, Renner Springs is the only source of light after dark out here. The highway is not lit, either. You can hear the grumbling sound of the road trains’ engines long before they shoot out of the night, most of them brightly lit up like a Christmas tree.

We’ve also learned a quite interesting fact about cattle. They are a very special species. Once they’ve been slaughtered, cut in half and stacked in a cool truck, they make much more noise than during their lifetime. For a couple of hours, a road train was parked next to the campsite with the generator running.

The wind picked up force during the night and shook our camper like a milkshake. The awning was bellowing in the wind, giving our campervan yet an additional good shaking. Torsten had to go outside and take it down at 3h30.

After breakfast, Claudia tried herself at a Rambo imitation and tore one of the hooks, whose job it is to hold the hydraulic pop-up roof down during the day, out of its base plate. Luckily enough, Torsten is quite gifted with repairing things. This act of vandalism cost us 45 minutes.

The screwdriver was put to good use again in Alice Springs. In the parking lot of Coles, a bloke approached us, asking whether we had a screwdriver. He had locked his car keys in his boot and had to break it open.

The trip to Alice was uneventful, though very windy. We saw lots of crows feasting on run-over roos. The crows seem to have a good grip on the carrion-business. We saw far less wedgies in these parts than in 1997.

Our fifth crossing of the Tropic of Capricorn was duly taped and photographed. The sixth, however, went unnoticed, as we passed the Tropic somewhere along the Tanami Road – never mind!

After a short, yet involuntary detour to Alice Springs airport, we checked into McDonnell Range Cara Park, a few kilometres south of Alice Springs (BIG 4 = 10% discount for Kea and other rental cars). The cara park is very nice, and our usual critical check of the amenities resulted in 9 out of 10 possible points J.

The day started with a chilly 8°C at 6h30, too cold to be comfy. At first, we hardly met a soul on the highway except the usual suspects – crows – and the odd wedgie or kite. At 9h30 we pulled out at Erldunda Roadhouse to fill up our car and treated ourselves to hamburgers. We then hit the Lasseter Hwy to our final destination. There was a fair bit of traffic, but most of it were oncoming campervans.

About 40 km before arriving in Yulara, we saw a big (controlled?) bushfire in the distance.

As we knew that we’d be in for a couple of chilly nights, we each acquired a (second) fleece jumper in the Yulara Shopping Centre. At 5h30 (shortly before sundown), the temperature was 25°C, just one and a half hour later it had dropped to 14°C (and dropped even further).

The gold of the Spinifex grass and the orange-red soil dominate the landscape in the centre. Our boots, once black and brown, are covered in a thick layer of red bulldust.

Our neighbours on the campsite have taken a liking to us and pulled up their campervan so close to ours that we can not only hear, but also smell their burps J. Before dinner, we walked to one of the resort’s sand dune lookouts to watch the sunset over Uluru.

We braved the cold this morning (5°C!) to watch the sunrise over Uluru and Kata Tjuta. Beautiful! We were chilled to the bone afterwards, and being the city slickers we are, it took us almost 2 hours to warm us up again.

We called in to the post office and the supermarket (bloody expensive) and took off to the National Park (15 km from the resort).

We took the walk to Mutitjulu Waterhole, seeing hundreds of zebra finches on the way, drove around the base and had our obligatory snack at – not on – the climb, watching people crawl up and down like ants (not as fast and agile, though).

The displays at the Cultural Centre were as interesting as five years ago.

Kata Tjuta was also as impressive as in 1997. Back then, we had done the Olga Gorge Walk. This year it was the Valley of the Winds Walk to the first lookout, Karu (40 minutes return). The view of the plains is beautiful!

We decided to take a closer look at Uluru in the setting sun and drove back to the sunset car park. We were lucky enough to be there quite early and could pick our spot. No words can describe Uluru changing its colour in the setting sun! So beautiful, you’ll have to see it for yourself.

PS. We saw yet another big bushfire in the distance.

This night was a bit warmer than the previous one, 13°C at 9h15 p.m.

The skies over Uluru were overcast when we hit the road this morning. Same at Mt Conner, thus we didn’t take a picture. Overcast skies plus a mere 6°C in the early morning didn’t exactly result in feeling cozy-comfy. There’s just one thing to do: get going as quick as possible and turn on the heating while driving.

The clouds cleared shortly before we reached King’s Canyon Resort. On the way there, on the Luritja Road, a group of six or so red kangaroos (i.e. males, probably a bachelors’ day out?) had obviously considered to pose for a picture, but a vehicle overtaking us rapidly changed their minds. By the time we had our cameras ready, they had already disappeared into the surrounding bushland L.

King’s Canyon Resort is nicely laid out (nicer than Yulara, if you care to know what we think), with spacious sites. We picked one at the end of a row with a nice, open view to the ranges.

As the clouds had cleared off, the skies were blue and the sun in full force, we decided to sunbathe. And to wash Claudia’s jeans. She was no longer familiar with the opening mechanism of the little tomato sauce plastic containers, decorating her clean blue jeans with a very nice, irregular red pattern.

While we were basking in the sun, two doves joined us on either side of our chairs.

We arrived at the canyon around 3 p.m. and were more than sorry to learn that the rim walk (6 km) takes about 3.5 hours. As the sun set at 6, and you shouldn’t walk in the dark, we had to content ourselves with the canyon walk (2 km return). That one’s very picturesque too, with river red gums (trunks are white) set against the backdrop of the sheer red canyon walls. Part of the walking track leads through the dry bed of King’s Creek.

Back on the site, we watched hundreds of Galahs (or so it seemed) turning in for the night on their sleeping trees around the campsite. Their agility, speed, and precision is quite a show!

After acquiring the permit (AU$ 2.20, incl. a keepsake-brochure), we hit our first gravel. The Mereenie Loop is a well-maintained gravel road with a few corrugations here and there. It merges into the Larapinta drive further down the track, a dirt road with lots of potholes, and is tarred between Hermannsburg and Alice Springs.

For a short moment, we thought ourselves in Africa, as a small group of wild camels (dromedaries) crossed the road ahead of us.

After 195 km, we reached Hermannsburg, a former German (Lutheran) mission. We visited the exhibition about the Lutheran missionaries in the Kata Anga Tea Room, looked at the remaining mission buildings and backtracked a short way to the turnoff to Palm Valley in Finke River National Park.

The track (21 km one-way) closely follows the – at this time of the year – dry Finke River, sometimes leading through it. The major part of the track on sand, gravel, and grit is easy going, if bumpy. About 18 km down the track road conditions change. You’ll need about 30 minutes for the remaining 4 km to the car park, working your way over rocks and natural stone slabs (quite big ones). Claudia was a bit worried at the sight of one or the other natural ‘staircase’, but Torsten ignored her worries, having the time of his life.

Palm Valley is unique and very beautiful. Two living fossils grow there: cycads and red cabbage palms, the latter are said to be indigenous to the place (extinct in the rest of the world). The full-grown palms you see there are about 200 years old, but their kind has been around for millions of years.

We took about an hour to explore the valley, first wandering along the dry riverbed, then climbing up to the rim and following the track there. Our bones, a bit shaken up from the drive, had just about the time to re-adjust themselves to their original position, before being shaken like flakes in a snow dome on the way out.

At the end of the rim walk, a few markers were missing, and we were not the only ones to look for the safe way down to the car park.

We decided to change our plans. Instead of staying in Palm Valley, we wanted to drive to Glen Helen. Yet, as the afternoon was drawing close, we didn’t want to drive in the dark and Alice Springs was closer by, we returned to the McDonnell Range Cara Park and will discover the neighbourhood of Alice Springs tomorrow.

Somewhere along the Palm Valley track, our second drawer decided to also apply the automatic-opening-feature. We need more tape.

 First scenic stop today was Simpson’s Gap early in the morning: a beautiful gorge with a sandy bottom. We could walk up quite close to the gap, but a pond prevented us from walking through. A heron was fishing in the pond, but we didn’t see any of the black-footed rock wallabies.

There were very few people around, and we enjoyed the peace and quiet of an early morning in a splendid natural setting.

On to Standley Chasm. It’s in private hands, the entrance fee is 6 AU$ per adult. The walking track (40 minutes return) takes you along a dry creek bed right into the gorge, which is very narrow in the end. Before setting off on the track, we saw a black-footed rock wallaby at the kiosk, and another one in the gorge, oblivious to the tourists taking pictures… even to those loudly commenting on the beauty and quiet…

Whatever, those pictures of the wallaby in the gorge will most certainly be our best pickies of roos in the wild.

We had planned a short break at Ellery Creek Hole (a popular swimming and picnic spot for the residents of Alice Springs), but unfortunately, there was some roadwork going on, so we decided to move on.

Next stop were the Ochre Pits. Definitely worth a visit! Bands of ochre in red, white, yellow and black set against the blue skies and the white trunks of gum trees – beaut! They must be even more picturesque in the late afternoon (we were there around lunchtime). These pits are the local Aboriginal tribe’s traditional supply for ochre, and it is strictly forbidden to collect any for yourself. A fine of 20,000 AU$ (twenty-thousand) applies.

Ormiston Gorge is also very beautiful, although we only walked to the swimming hole. We recommend you scramble up the mountain along a very narrow track to the Ghost Gum Lookout high above the gorge. Only on the last few meters of this track, you will find stairs and railings, but if Claudia who’s very afraid of heights could do it, we suppose anybody can. The return walk took us about 30 min., plus a while to savour the great view on the gorge and the surrounding bushland from the lookout.

 We spent this day mainly in the Alice Springs Desert Park, where you can see beautifully arranged displays of Australian fauna and flora of the different desert regions: bushland, woodland, sand plains, clay and mud pans, waterhole, riverbed.

This park may be smaller than the Territory Wildlife Park near Darwin, but is just as beautiful and informative. A must-see. Admission is 18 AU$ for adults (40 AU$ for a family of four).

Our mission for the remainder of the afternoon was shop ‘til you drop in Todd Mall.

We had an early start at 7 a.m. Claudia drove the first odd 167 km to Tilmouth Well Roadhouse. This part of the Tanami Road is mostly sealed, and Torsten – the off-road-junkie! – wanted to keep the gravel only part for himself.

At Tilmouth Well, we filled up on diesel and had a delicious sausage roll (without tomato sauce this time J). Road conditions to Rabbit Flat were good, a few corrugations here and there, and bulldust. We met two oncoming road trains. We stopped on the shoulder, as they do raise a hell of a lot of dust!

The bush camp at Rabbit Flat is 3 AU$ per person plus 3 AU$ per shower – a very welcome treat after a dusty day on the road. The counter is barred for the staff’s security. The bush camp is about 100 m away from the roadhouse and has one very clean, yet ‘topless’ dunny. Don’t forget to bring your own toilet paper as well as a torch after dark!

A group had decided to gather round a campfire for a beer and a chat, and Dale was kind enough to invite us to join them. The 12 of us were all headed in the same direction, i.e. west on the Tanami, although our ways would part upon reaching the sealed highway, either in direction of Kununurra, Broome, or the Gibb River Road. We had a very nice evening with Dale and Rose, Trevor and Yvi, Coral and Alan, Trish, Greg and Glenn and the others (as Trevor said later on, he knew he couldn’t remember all the names, so he decided to call everybody ‘mate’).

Petrol and diesel are naturally very expensive at Rabbit Flat, with diesel at 1.55 AU$ the litre.

We were the first to leave at 7h15. The others saw us off with a smile and a wave.

The first 200 km west of Rabbit Flat were in a very good condition, with the exception of the stretch between the Tanami Gold Mine and the border to Western Australia. At the border, we turned back our clocks by 1.5 hours, which accounts for 20 minutes for the 120 km driven J.

The stretch to Billiluna takeoff was well graded (we actually saw the grader), beyond that there were some corrugations and washouts. We saw flocks of budgies and a snake that wanted to cross the road, but saw us and waited till we had passed by.

Wolfe Creeke Meteorite Crater is a must-see in the region. The view from the rim, as well into the crater as to the vast surrounding landscape is magnificent. The only human sign of life we saw were two or three cars travelling in the distance, visible only because of the dust trailing behind.

Wolfe Creek is the second largest meteorite crater in the world, the largest being Meteor Crater in Arizona. Trees grow inside Wolfe Creek Crater (as opposed to Arizona), and the white patches you see are salt deposits. The Aboriginal legend says that a giant snake came out of the ground here, and left these salt patches as it came from the Indian Ocean (what is now Broome). We then continued over the grounds of Ruby Plains Station, part of the Kidman empire. Before reaching the sealed highway, you’ll come across a quarantine container. Due to quarantine regulations for the Kimberley, you have to dump any vegies, fruit, nuts, seeds, and honey you carry. We ate our apples – which also counts as dumping, we suppose – and dutifully got rid of our honey.

The 19 km on tar to Halls Creek were uneventful.

There still is only one cara park in Halls Creek (see our 1999 travel yarn), and we’re sorry to say that is hasn’t improved. Quite the contrary. Since our first visit, there obviously has been no maintenance work whatsoever. The concrete slabs are crumbling away, and after we checked out the amenities block close to our site, we decided to use the other one. Cost per night for 2 people: 21 AU$.

We hooked up our video camera and settled inside our van to see the first hour of film. We had just about finished, when to our immense joy Greg and Glenn pulled up, closely followed by Trevor and Yvi. A spring of Greg’s trailer had broken. Trevor also had to repair something. Greg and Glenn took the site next to ours – we share a crumbly slab – and Trevor and Yvi settled in across the aisle.

Greg had to sell his farm, bought a discharged Hertz pop top Landcruiser and decided to travel round Australia for a change, accompanied by his buddy Glenn. They’re both about our age. Trevor is retired, and Yvi is on leave till September (we should be so lucky!). They escaped the Victorian winter.

A couple of days later, Torsten bought the “Australian” (a newspaper) and read that they had 15°C and rain in Brussels. Trevor said that they had the same weather in Victoria now, not considering that it’s winter in Victoria, but summer in Europe…

read more, part 2