Day 11

Monday, 24th September
Alice Springs - Yulara

Alice Springs
Erldunda
Mount Ebenezer
Curtin Springs
Yulara

Distance Traveled

Today - 447 km

Total - 4469 km

Blog

We packed up camp and headed to the Alice Springs Desert Park. It is a great setup. There was a long walk around with lots of aviaries and sections showing all the different types of deserts,water holes and dry creeks.

I thought it would be fairly quick, but we took the whole morning.

The afternoon was planned to spend driving to Kings Canyon.

We drove through a few little settlements of nothing more than a fuel station and van park out the back.

We started driving along the Kings Canyon road, but it was hugely corrigated. We tried for about 5km, but it didn't get any better.

We ended up driving back to go around the long way, an extra 140km.

When we started on the Uluru road, there was an aboriginal family sitting on the side of the road. The man was in the middle of the road pulling us up. He wanted oil. I told him I didn't have any, so he asked for $20. I offered him 5 and he said ok and stepped back to let us pass.

When we hit the Kings Canyon road, I decided to just continue on to Uluru.

We stayed at Yulara, which is the camping and motel section about 23km from Uluru and the National Park. You aren't allowed to camp near Uluru itself. Its only a small town with a single ring road and accomodation blocks going off. There is a supermarket and a fuel station as well as police and services all there.

We arrived just on sunset to watch the sun set over the rock.

We had pasta and then off to bed.

The Alice Springs Desert Park. An excellent capture of many different desert landscapes

Wildflowers in the desert at the Alice Springs Desert Park

A desert bird at the Alice Springs Desert Park

Another desert bird (actually, its the same one)

Amazing the amount of flowers that grow in the desert

Love the head gear. Check out the red sand. Its rusted.

I dare you to eat some

Anthills up close

Wildflowers in the desert

Nesting Bird at the Alice Springs Desert Park

The Butcher Bird. Read on and see how he got his name

This is what the Butcher Bird does with its prey

A few roos around with not much to do

The kids wanting to play with the roo

More lazy roos waiting for it to cool down a bit

One of the emus at the Alice Springs Desert Park

The road out of Alice Springs heading south

Further down the road

Not so flat and deserty

Stuarts Well on the way to Uluru

The Kings Canyon road. This road became too corrigated to drive on. Everything was vibrating to peices

Kings Canyon Road

Back onto the tar road for a 160km detour

The outback

The good road

Desert Landscape

Mount Conner. Often mistaken for Uluru. We even had our own debate about it.

The road just goes on and on.

Mount Conner from the top of a sand dune

A hidden salt lake over the other side of the sand dune. No one else wanted to walk up the dune and didn't even know the lake was there.

Curtin Springs. The last free camp spot before Uluru, only 96km down the road.

Now that is Uluru. This is taken from the sand dune behind our camp

Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) in the south west direction from the same sand dune

Look at all those tourists on the next sand dune

The great red sunset you get everynight in the outback

Another look around again at Uluru

Us and the rock

More of the sunset

The kids love playing in the red sand. It is actually rusted and makes everything red. Don't wear a white teeshirt.