Day 104

Day 104 Ayers Rock

Said goodbye to Alice Springs. The town is lovely, the people friendly and the views spectacular,

Garage Sales

Todd River

what more could you want. We had heard a few stories on the way across from other travellers that had nothing but bad news and recommended that we bypass the town. We did consider this but both decided we would give it a go. Alice Springs is one of those places that you hear about all your life that you just have to visit. The town is lovely, the people friendly and we saw no signs of any problems at all, don’t know what they were on about, we could happily live here. But we had to hit the road, tempting as it was to stay on a few days more and do more sights, the road beckoned.

Finke River room with a view

Girt and Trude at the Finke

We hit the tarmac, but not before a quiet breakfast and a read of the paper. We got to the Garage Sale section and they do something here that we should get the Mandurah Mail to do, they have little boxes on the adds you can tick if you want to see and tick when you have seen it. It amuses us every time we see it, got a picture today. Well the Todd River flows through Alice, but just down the road from our camp is Ross River, yes the very river where Ross River Virus came from, so no turning Left here. We hit the Stuart and headed South towards our destination.

Finke River

Some fools idea of touring

We stopped at the Finke River, the oldest river to still be using its original flow path. It has apparently been using this same river bed for 35-60 million years, I suppose if you like something, you stick to it. It drains towards Lake Eyre and has done so for some time. They reckon this river was here 165 million years ago and was part of the inland sea. It only runs now following rain, something we were doing. There was this rain cloud in front of us and it rained in front of us and we never caught it for about an hour. The road was wet and puddly, but we got like 3 drops on the windscreen. But the temperature was perfect. We had the air con on 1 and felt cool, what an amazing difference 10 degrees can make. It was still over 30 outside, but we have become so acclimatised to the heat that it seems cool. We were remembering our last night in Darwin with Tony and Julie watching the sun go down and commented how perfect

Erldunda Statue

Erldunda Echidna

the temperature was that evening in our T-shirts and Shorts (well Me, Maureen had real clothes on) and there was Julie with a light jumper on because it was just getting chilly for her.

Erldunda was our next stop. It is the turn off from Stuart Highway to Ayers Rock – Uluru or to be more precise to Yulara, the township near the rock. At the roadhouse they have a shed and in it are two huge statues / carvings from local wood of local animals, one a Frilled neck Lizard and the other

Highway after lost traveller

Almost there

and Echidna. Whoever did them was a real artist and the echidna looks as cute as the real thing. Erldunda was established in 1870 by Richard Warburton, son of Peter Warburton, the explorer. Turns out the sone established a station here in 1870 and his dad wanted to lead an expedition to explore west from here. He missed out on leading the expedition so he decided to make his own up and he, with his son, 2 white stockmen, a black tracker , two afghans and a pack of camels set off on the first all camel expedition and headed West. He kept going until he hit the west Coast at Roebourne with only 1 camel left!

Mt Ebenezer Roadhouse

Be your own station owner

Anyhow, his son came back and re-established the Station and it was in Warburton hands until the 1920s. The Erldunda Roadhouse is at the turn off to Lasseter Highway so we headed on down the road. There was some roadkill on the side of the road and the usual suspects were there but when I tooted the horn to warn them off the others fled and left this big old Eagle there. He was a lovely picture just standing there watching us go by and his partner was just a couple of metres away watching as well.

We stopped at MT Ebenezer roadhouse, there are signs that we are hitting the tourist trail again as there are starting to be buses with tourists on them. We hit two here that were full and were heading out. There was also a station for sale here, we did not get the price, but we did get the sign for those who are interested, comes with your own pair of Wedge Tail Eagles!

Maureen at the Rock

ME at the Rock

We got into Yulara and caught our first glimpses of the Rock. We found or park and set up the van. Having been cooped up in the car all day, Maureen needed to get out so we unpacked her bike and the Beast and went for a ride around town. At sunset, there was this big exodus from the caravan park. Everyone was off to see the sunset. We were not to be left behind, so we packed up and followed along. Now the park is hardly full, in fact it is 90% plus empty, but when we got to the sunset viewing car park, it was full.

As the sun goes down

Just after the sun goes down

We drove in and sure enough, Acrod Parking, right in the middle, little bench in front, perfect! We joined the throng and watched the sun go down. The Rock is funny in that as you drive towards it, it looks huge, then you get closer and change the angle and it looks smaller. We are yet to get right up close to it where I assume it will get big again, especially when it comes time to walk around it. The Rock changes colour as the sun changes angle and I have two pictures from the same spot, one with the sun low and the other with the sun gone.

Tomorrow we expect to get up close and reccy out where we have to go for our trek and where the other lookouts are.