King’s Canyon was as good as we expected. The caravan park at King’s Canyon “Resort” is a good outback park, different to most in that dingos roam freely throughout the park, looking for food, day and night. We enjoyed the 3 hour rim walk around the canyon. The first climb was steep but the scenery around the rim is amazing, certainly worth the exertion. Happy hour sessions at the park were good fun although the sunsets were not as good as we have seen elsewhere because the sky was overcast. 

Somewhere along the reasonably good dirt road called the Mereenie Loop to Glen Helen Gorge we were attacked by a rock that broke some pvc plumbing under the van but we could manage without it while staying overnight at Glen Helen Gorge. This is a comfortable park with a bar and restaurant in the old homestead and fire buckets near the caravan sites. 

We are now in Alice Springs, having had the plumbing fixed and the laundry and shopping completed and are about to leave for the East Macdonnell Ranges, followed by a few hundred kms of rough roads before we join the Stuart Highway near Tennant Creek. We will be travelling along Binn’s Track through what promises to be really interesting country.

Love to all

Ted and Jo 

We started with a night at Brighton caravan park so that we could charge up the fridge, only to discover that we couldn’t get 240 volt power into the caravan, so the first 2 stops on our holiday were the auto-electrician and Slades Caravan Repairs to find that we had a burnt-out element in our hot water service. Luckily it was a quick fix so we were able to get to a small caravan park near Port Pirie on the first day.

Since then we have travelled about 1700 kms under a clear blue ski, with the temperature in the mid- to high-20’s and hardly any wind – just about perfect. We bush camped about 200 metres from the highway 180 km south of Coober Pedy then had our first mishap in Coober Pedy – Ted kicked the cap of the toilet cassette into the dump point.  As a result we haven’t been able to use the caravan toilet so have  had to spend the last few nights in caravan parks.  It doesn’t matter because we have still have had pleasant happy hours with lots of nice people.

We have stopped overnight at Marla, Erldunda (the first stop in Northern Territory) and we are now in Yulara. Normally the highlights at Yulara are Uluru and The Olgas.  Sunrise at The Olgas was beautiful, followed by a 2-hour hike. Uluru is magnificent of course so we had a look at that.  This year two other highlights were in place just for us.  Firstly, the Field of Lights display had 50,000 globes installed on thin waving poles in the desert, joined by 380 kms of optic fibre cable.  This was very interesting; Google it for good photos. Secondly, early this morning we were woken by the caravan moving as though being rocked by strong winds. It was a bit scary but we went back to sleep once the wind stopped. Later we found out that it wasn’t wind at all; instead we had experienced a 6.1 magnitude earthquake centred between here and Alice Springs. There were a couple of after shocks but we didn’t notice them. Fortunately no damage was done anywhere. 

We are looking forward to leaving here for Kings Canyon tomorrow because that is one of out favourite memories from our first visit to the red centre in 1995.

Keep well everyone. 

Ted and Jo