The Red Centre, NT, to Geraldton, WA
- jmsrtldg
- Nov 3, 2024
- 10 min read
I extended my stay in Alice Springs by a couple of days, to get some welding repairs made to my bike rack (I have now spent a small fortune repairing the rack and, in retrospect, it would have been smarter to go straight for a motorbike rack from the get-go!).
I also took the opportunity to book an hour-long balloon flight at sunrise near the East MacDonnell Ranges just to the southeast of Alice - ballooning being a novel experience for me.
While the moments when we glided serenely along in total silence were memorable, they were interspersed by the pilot operating the gas burners to maintain an appropriate altitude - the roar of the burners was incredibly loud and the heat reflected back on to the passengers in the gondola was often quite intense!
Apart from a few cattle roaming in the 'paddocks' (measured in hundreds of square kilometres) and a couple of 'roos, there was not alot to entertain (the sunrise was not a particularly spectacular one, on this occasion), although we did pass close to Alice Springs airport, where there remain a number of modern jet airliners (including a couple of A380s) parked up in long-term storage (because the desert climate is so dry). I was impressed, however, with the pilot's skill in landing the gondola and balloon given the wind speed across the ground as we descended.
Despite assuming a 'brace' position in anticipation of the basket/gondola tipping over, we managed to come to a stop and drop the balloon safely while remaining upright! After exiting the balloon, it was 'all hands to the pump' to expel all the air from the balloon and assist the ground staff to roll the balloon up and stow it on a trailer. Only then did we celebrate the successful flight with a glass of champagne (apparently a long-standing tradition among balloonists harking back to the earliest days of the Montgolfier brothers in the 1780's in France) and a snack or two.
Leaving Alice, I spent a day travelling westward along the West MacDonnell Ranges visiting a number of chasms, gorges and swimming holes. First out of the blocks was Simpsons Gorge. Nothing spectacular to report here, although when I walked to the end of the marked track to a small waterhole, I came across a number of women lying prostrate on the sand, some with arms and legs spread wide, trying to absorb some of the supposed feminine spirituality of the place (which I think was deemed sacred to aboriginal women)...quite surreal! I captured them on a short video clip that I took, this is a still shot/frame from it (you can make some of them out in the bottom left corner of the picture).
Next on the itinerary for this day was checking out Standley Chasm, for which a small fee was charged for the privilege. The chasm was impressive, particularly as the sun rose higher in the sky, lighting up the intense red colours of the rock formations.
The first gorge I was able to swim at was the Elery Creek Big Hole, and given the early heatwave that was being experienced in the 'Red Centre' and walks I had already completed that morning, the opportunity was taken for a much-appreciated dip!
Before heading to my campground for the night, I stopped in briefly at the Ochre Pits. Again, sacred material for the indigenous people, who 'harvested' the differently-coloured hues from here to grind up to make their paints for use in both rock art and body painting.
Ormiston Gorge is where I stopped for the night in a National Park campground, it also had a superb swimming hole nearby to cool off after setting up camp!
The drive to Kings Canyon over the 4WD-only Mereenie Loop (to save several hundred km of backtracking to do it on the bitumen!) the following morning was a bit of a trial. Once again there was plenty of awful corrugations and dust - it was a shortcut that still took me nearly 4 hours to complete, before arriving at the sanctuary of the Discovery Kings Canyon Resort ....and a swimming pool - bliss!
After talking with a number of staff and other campers, I elected to tackle the full Kings Canyon Rim Walk the following morning. While the initial climb up the steps to the rim of the crater was pretty tiring, tackling it early in the morning helped. The views from the rim of the canyon were pretty amazing.
The looping trail from then on was much more level-ish, including more lookout points and descending into a small oasis of water and greenery, known as the 'Garden of Eden'. For my knackered knees, however, it was the last stretch descending back down the gorge that was the hardest part. Yet again, my investment in a pair of walking poles proved their worth.
Stiff and sore the next morning, I upped camp and headed down to Yulara, the small tourist township that 'services' both Uluru (Ayer's Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) National Park. It has the sole campground, which was one of the most expensive I have camped in to date - but given the unique nature of the environs, I shouldn't grumble about it too much...and they did have a pool, too (...but the beer was A$15 a pint!).
Having detached the trailer, I got up at 'silly o'clock' the next morning in order to make the 30-minute drive to Uluru to catch the sunrise from a viewing area. Having paid my 3-day fee to enter the Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park (...of course it operates independently of other NT National Parks...), the sunrise viewing area was a bit ordinary, with lots of people vying to 'own' the best spots for photograph-taking, but it is a pretty impressive monolith, nonetheless - just a shame about all the more recent 'rules' limiting how close you could get to the rock itself and which areas of the rock you were permitted to photograph.
With it still being so early in the morning, I elected to do a couple of easy walks, starting with the Kuniya Walk to the Mutitjulu Waterhole (@1km return). As the southern and western parts of the rock were still in the shade, I decided to keep walking and subsequently completed the full Base Walk of @ 10.6km...it was definitely getting very hot by the end of the walk, though (I missed the assistance of my walking poles), and my first stop on returning to the campground was, naturally, the pool!
Later that evening I was whisked off by bus to a nearby camel farm, from where I undertook a sunset tour.
Camels are definitely comical-looking creatures!
My ruminant dromedary 'steed' was named Lasseter (after a gold prospector and explorer in the region). Lasseter (and the majority of camels used for this activity are indeed (but not exclusively) male) was the only camel obliged to wear a muzzle, because he tended to bite the bum of any camel in front of of him (as they are all tethered together for the walking tours)!
It was not, however, my first experience, having previously ridden a camel as a child (@11 or 12?) on holiday with a friend and his mother in Hammamet, Tunisia!
The camel ride was conducted at a very sedate pace (camels naturally walk at a slightly slower pace than humans, apparently) and quite relaxing, too Following a photo shoot with Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the distant background, we watched the sun as it slowly sank behind Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), before heading back to the farm for refreshments and nibbles.
I repeated the early start in my departure from Yulara, as I wanted to see the sunrise on Kata Tutja from a recommended viewing spot some 50km from the campground. While not a monolith, it was still impressive collection of sandstone rocks, so I took the opportunity to do a couple of walks to the Valley of the Winds (Karu Lookout) and the Walpa Gorge walk before a 'dash' for the NT/WA border (I was obliged to apply for special permits to travel the Great Central Road in both NT and WA, and it was only valid for three days). The beautiful bitumen ran out some 50km W from Kata Tjuta and yet again turned into dastardly red dirt/bulldust ...and the associated corrugations! Having taken some video footage of driving on the dirt roads and corrugations, I realised that the GoPro was set up to smooth it all out, so it looks like a Sunday drive rather than a bone and teeth chattering challenge - I'm sure there is a setting that can render a more realistic video!
I took a short break just before the NT/WA order to check out Harold Lasseter's Cave (yes, the dude after whom my dromedary was named), where he had been desperately searching for a legendary gold reef that he himself had discovered some thirty years previously. He perished in 1930, a short distance away from the cave in which his diary was discovered. One of the more poignant entries was "What good is a reef worth millions? I would give it all for a loaf of bread."
Along with the special permits to travel the Outback Way in WA, there were restrictions on where one could stop and camp, as it was mostly indigenous land and special communities. In all I stayed at three recommended roadhouses (Warakurna, Warburton and Tjukayirla - the latter known for being the most remote roadhouse in Australia) on the WA section of the Great Central Road. I didn't take many photographs, as this was often 'requested' by signs at the roadhouses.
As with the town of Alice Springs, roadhouses, campgrounds, businesses and private residences in some of the more remote parts of the NT and WA are often surrounded by both gates and 4m/12-foot high fences topped by razor wire for security purposes. Even the roadhouse pumps (where the cost of diesel rose from $1.80/L up to $3.20/L!) were individually protected by locked steel cages to prevent theft - generally a sad indictment on the failure to effectively assimilate the aboriginal people/culture into western society/culture. Alcohol restrictions, ranging from a total ban on the consumption of alcohol to restricted days/hours of police-supervised purchase from bottle stores (eg in Alice), were also prevalent as I travelled parts of NT and WA.
Have I mentioned the heat? Most of the trip on the Outback Way was undertaken during a spring season characterised this year by a mini heat-wave (especially as I travelled through the Red Centre and Great Central Road). Temperatures were up to 42C some days, and while it was a dry heat (alot more bearable than humid heat), the associated hot wind meant that even the shade provided little or no respite. On those occasions I elected not to run my airconditioning, the effect of thermal equilibrium (I think that is the right terminology, but please correct me if I'm am wrong) made EVERYTHING that wasn't in the fridge heat up - every liquid and solid foodstuffs in cupboards, every object inside and outside of the motorhome all took on the same temperature - it was even hot to touch (Julia, I'm not sure it would be your cup of tea at all)! When I did run the aircon, it worked hard just to maintain a temperature of 22-23C inside the motorhome.
Have I mentioned road trains? They are something fairly unique to Australia, where distances between civilisation and remote outposts are significant, necessitating the use of road trains comprising a truck towing up to four huge trailers, in order to transport fuel, machinery, goods, houses, vehicles, etc to keep these outposts going. They can be up to 60m long (almost 200 feet) and weigh up to 200 tonnes! They often take up more than a 'standard' single lane in width and can consequently, as a result of both their size and weight, take a very long time to both brake/come to stop or accelerate to overtake. Accordingly, they have the right of way on the roads, whether dirt , single lane or otherwise! While I came across a few in QLD, they were plentiful in both the NT and WA, particularly in support of the mining industries.
Have I mentioned the bulldust? From Boulia in QLD through to Laverton in WA the dust kicked up on the dirt roads was plentiful and awful. If you were able to spot a road train coming from the opposite direction in the distance, it was often a case of pulling off the road completely and stopping - 1) to reduce the chance of being hit by rocks being thrown up by the trucks and their trailers, and 2) to sit and wait for the following dust cloud to dissipate so that you could see the road again. Thankfully for me this was rare! The dust, however, is very fine like talcum powder and gets in EVERYWHERE, regardless of how well-sealed you think your moho is. Even after a thorough washing in Geraldton, some things remain stained red.
Have I mentioned the flies? Australian flies are one of the most persistent and annoying features of this vast country. They seem to become progressively more annoying and aggressive the further North and the further West you travel! They are unique in that they seem to target orifices first and foremost (especially the ears, nostrils and eyes) before other body parts. It has become so bad that, despite sunny and warm conditions with a pleasant breeze, you often can't sit outside before the little bu**ers start to drive you insane. Yes, I know that there are fly nets to be worn about the head that are effective in stopping them entering the aforementioned orifices, but unless everyone is wearing them, they make you look slightly ridiculous and definitely most unfashionable!
Laverton generally marks the western-end of the Outback Way and the resumption of bitumen roads (yay!). Along with two further overnight stops at Leinster and Mount Magnet, these towns exist predominantly to service the mining industry (mainly nickel and gold) which is WA. The towns are so reliant on mining, for example, that the companies also run the campgrounds and many other public facilities (such as swimming pools). It did, however, mean that there was generally a pub, grocery store and cheaper fuel in these places, too.
I arrived in the west coast town of Geraldton towards the end of October, staying at a free 24-hour RV park in the centre/foreshore of town. This marked the end of this section of my leisurely trip from the East coast to the West coast of Australia, starting from Brisbane in early September. The town is a major fishing hub and the principal shipping point for Australian wheat. Despite this source of wealth generation, and with the exception of the immediate foreshore developments, the town still appeared to be a little run-down, with many vacant shops along the principal street and in the main shopping mall. I did mark the start of my next section of the Big Lap by taking a morning dip in the Indian Ocean from the town beach on the morning of my departure. Being on bitumen roads for the next little while, I also took the opportunity to put both the moho and trailer through a thorough self-service carwash. I am now heading south to Perth and the SW corner of the country, before heading across the Nullabor Plains towards South Australia and eventually back to Raymond Island, Victoria at the end of the year...hopefully....if Henri and Kate are ready to put up with me....again!
'Hooroo' until next time,
Jimmo (James)
+61 400 068 257
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