2006/06 Australia trip - Kings Creek |
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Sunday June 11th
The morning was bright, cold, and windy. The first town in the Northern Territory is Alice Springs, almost two hundred miles north of us, but there are a few roadhouses along the way. We filled up at Kulgera, noting that the price of diesel had gone up steeply, and sailed past the next station at Erldunda. This is where most people turn off onto the Lasseter Highway to go to Uluru (Ayres Rock) and Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), but we weren’t going there this time as we’d spent a while there on our 1995 trip. We’d had a good time amongst the scenery but Uluru has one of the most expensive, badly designed, and grotty campgrounds in Australia.
Instead we went a little further north and turned onto the parallel Ernest Giles Highway, which is about 50 miles of rock, red sand, and dust. This deters most travelers so it’s a peaceful drive, except for the occasional sideways slide. The beginning of the highway isn’t too bad, but the part that crosses aboriginal land is almost all deep sand, requiring constant speed to maintain progress.
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We stopped at the Henbury Meteor Craters, partly for lunch and partly because we’d seen a lot of birds there on our last trip in 2002. The craters were formed about 4000 years ago when meteorite fragments hits the area. (Just imagine how Superman might have turned out if he’d been raised by Aborigines.) Today, just the eroded craters remain, and the fragments of the meteors have been carted off to museums.
This time we didn’t see any birds other than crows, but we did meet a camel, who looked a bit unhappy to find humans on his turf. The camels were brought in as working animals, and now there are thousands running wild. John and Edna saw a lot on their trip to this area, but this was our first wild one. Driving west through the sand traps we saw dozens more camels in the next few miles. We also briefly caught up with a dingo who took off smartly in the other direction.
The sides of the highway were littered with yellow and green melons. These must have looked like a gift from God to the early travelers, but in reality the melons contain very little water, taste awful, and are mildly poisonous. This explains why they haven’t been eaten by anything.
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Giles Road (1.37) |  |
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Scenically, the Giles road is more interesting than the main Stuart Highway. It has low rocky hills, and more shrubs and trees, including some that look like fuzzy lollipops. We didn’t remember these, so we must have missed them completely on our last trip.
The road comes out on the highway to Watarrka (Kings Canyon), which was blissfully smooth blacktop after pounding across the sand. We camped under a full moon at Kings Creek, a private campground with nice large shady campsites. They also do camel rides, helicopter rides, Harley rides, and “Quad” rides. Anything to make a buck.
I happened to be looking at their camels when someone showed up to feed them. Camels go real goofy when it’s feed time. They looked like a bunch of giant puppies galloping around their paddock in all directions. Unfortunately it was too dark to get any pictures.