Up again at 5am and on the road at our usual time. Our first stop today was at Curtain Springs Station, a cattle property of 1 million acres. We had a talk from an amazing lady, Lyndy, who with her husband owns this station. Her husband’s parents bought it in 1956 in a foreclosure sale. Her husband’s father and mother moved onto the station and immediately experienced a 9 year drought. Their arrival also coincided with the start of people traveling out to see the Rock and the track ran through the middle of their station so as an alternate source of income they started catering to tourists, firstly with fuel and food, and latterly with accommodation units and a caravan park. In the days before air conditioning, the mother used to be able to hear a car coming from 20 miles away and would be waiting for it in the middle of the road with a tray of scones.

We had lunch in a modified version of what had originally been the station homestead . It wasn’t till the 9 year drought broke that the family realised that their roof was not waterproof. The other amazing feature of this property is their cattle management. No mustering here. All the water points on the property are enclosed in stockyards with one way gates in and out. The cows teach their calves how to use the gates and when the station needs to collect the cattle they just shut the ‘out’ gate.

Back on the road, after a couple of hours we saw our first glimpses of Uluṟu as we crested some sand dunes. With the wet summer and some rains persisting into the normal dry season, the surrounding country was really at its prime. Lyndy had mentioned in her talk that she didn’t expect  to see the country looking this good again in her lifetime.

It is quite amazing to see the Rock appear in the distance. It just looks unreal. We drove up to the parking area near one side and walked along it. It was quite an emotional sensation being alongside it. All the Rock’s waterholes were filled with clear water and there was even a small waterfall off it on one side. 

My words cannot adequately describe Uluṟu and our pictures really don’t do it justice. The best I can do is to say that if you haven’t been there you really have to go, to see and feel the sensations it generates for yourself. It is a truly amazing place.

We checked into our hotel, Sails in the Desert. We had a beautiful room and the staff were great. At 5pm we were picked up for the ‘Sounds of Silence’ Dinner. We were wearing every piece of warm clothing we had.

We were dropped off near a sandhill which we climbed to the top, and had drinks and canapes while we watched the sun set. Very impressive.

We then wandered down the other side of the sandhill where they had tables set out and under a Milky Way like you have never seen, had a lovely buffet dinner after which a guy with a powerful laser pointer talked about the various constellations, pointing them out as he did.

Only downside was that it was absolutely freezing cold and we wound up in a tight ring of people surrounding a gas outdoor heater trying to get just a bit of warm.

All in all a very memorable day.

Alarm off at 5am again, breakfast at 6am and on the bus at 6:45am again. We were in Kings Canyon by 7am. Today’s activity was a walk at the canyon and there were two options. One was a walk around the canyon’s rim and the other was a walk on the canyon’s floor into the canyon. There was some difference of opinion about just how hard the rim walk was. The head guide was talking of a Mt Everest like assent requiring triathlete levels of fitness whereas his assistant was a tad more optimistic. As Jeanette was currently struggling with a cold, I talked her into the easier canyon floor walk.

Basic problem was that the rim walk took three hours and the floor walk took one hour so the floor walkers would have to wait in the car park for two hours for the other group to finish. After we had finished our floor walk, our guide suggested we might like to try a walk up to the rim on what she said was the easiest side to climb and come back that way so that’s what we did.

The walk into the canyon was very pretty with the recent rain filling the stream

The ascent however, was a fair way vertically up and was moderately challenging in places. It had fabulous views of the surrounding countryside and we finally made it to the top of the canyon rim where we turned around and came back down.

Given my ageing knees and diminished balance, going down was a bit more challenging and I must confess to a couple of heart pounding moments as I negotiated around the edge of boulders and rockfalls with a rather scary drop on one side, but we all descended safely and felt a great sense of accomplishment .

Back at the resort by 11am we walked to the local pub for lunch and spent the afternoon relaxing in our cabin.

Alarm went off at 5am, breakfast at 6am and on the bus at 6:45am. Rain that had fallen over the last two days had closed the usual dirt roads to our bus so we had a revised schedule on bitumen roads which meant more hours on the road (oh joy). Today we were checking out a couple of the breaks that had occurred in the McDonnell Ranges

Our first stop was Standley Chasm  which had been named after the first female teacher to work in the area. It was very pretty and the drizzling rain gave the rocks a lovely sheen.

Then back on the bus to Simpson’s Gap which again was an impressive sight. Back on the bus again and after two and a bit hours travelling we stopped at Emu Station for lunch. This was for me a bit of a let down as it was not, as I had imagined from the program, an outback cattle station but rather it turned out to be a petrol station. 

On the positive side they had some pet emus and Jeanette took to feeding one grapes which it seemed to like. I was somewhat surprised by this as Jeanette a few years back, was mugged by an Emu who snuck up behind her and stole a sandwich out of her hand and since that event she has always tended to have a rather dim view of that species.  Time seems to have worked its healing balm here. The other amazing sights here were the huge cars towing giant caravans and the bus-sized motor homes towing trailers with sedans on them, pulling in for petrol.

Anyway back on the bus for another two and half hour stint to Kings Canyon. With the wet summer and recent rains the country was really looking its best and I was struck by how pristine and untouched it looked for hundreds of miles.

We got into our Kings Canyon accommodation around 4pm. 

I should note that I have had a defect occur on my camera sensor resulting in a large circular moon shaped like blob appearing in the middle of all the photos. As a result, from this post onwards, Jeanette with her iPhone has assumed the offical mantle of trip photographer. If you notice a dramatic improvement in the quality of the images, please spare my feelings and don’t tell me.

After a night traveling on the Ghan, we disembarked at Alice Springs around 9am . I had slept very well overnight, the vibrations from the wheels acting a bit like one of those massage chairs. As well as awaking feeling incredibly relaxed, an additional fitness boost was had as my watch on the side table had clocked up 12000 steps for the day before I had even put it on. Jeanette, however, had been kept awake most of the night by the noise of the train and was feeling a little secondhand.

We got off the Ghan, collected our cases and sat down in the terminal to wait for our tour. After nearly an hour had passed they showed up, we got on their coach and were driven to the top of Anzac Hill which overlooks the town of Alice Springs and were told we had 15 minutes to check out the view. After that we were driven to our hotel. It was around 10:30 am and that was it from the tour’s view till a gathering at 5:30 that evening.

Problem was that our room at the hotel would not be available till 3pm in some four and a half hour’s time. The hotel was situated along the banks of the Todd River some twenty minutes walk from the town so we had our baggage stored and walked into Alice. 

It was a pretty walk into town by the river gums with the broad sandy expanse of the Todd river alongside us. We passed by their Botanical Gardens which looked much like the surrounding country side, the only difference being it had a fence around it. There was a small rocky hill on our right before the bridge into town and there on a ledge above us. Jeanette saw a Rock Wallaby enjoying the morning sun. Me, being of a cynical nature, suggested that it might have been a stuffed one superglued to the rock by the local tourist bureau, but it moved its head and we sighted three more of them each sitting in the morning sun on their particular rock observing the world passing by below.

And so into town. We found a place that did good coffee, wandered around the town and then walked back to our hotel arriving shortly before 1pm. I pleaded with the receptionist and we finally got given access to our room where I worked on the previous day’s blog post while Jeanette got acquainted with the hotel’s laundry.

At the 5:30 pm briefing I think I managed to get ourselves labeled as the group’s troublemakers by going head to head with the tour guide on the question of luggage. The brochure sent out by the tour company had a page dealing with baggage limits . Essentially it said  each individual was entitled to bring a bag weighing less than 16kgs and with the total of the cases height, width and depth not to exceed 150cms. We had carefully complied with that but having arrived in Alice Springs with our two complying cases, our guide now claimed that the baggage allocation was one case per couple. After some back and forth he agreed that while we were in fact entitled to two cases, he didn’t have room for them on the bus so some extreme late night repacking got us rearranged with one bag to take and one to go in storage. The vibes with this outfit are not great.

A bit of excitement to start the day when our 8:15 pickup to join the Ghan showed up at 7:50am, still thanks to the Orgainised One we were all packed and ready to roll. The station is a fair way out of town and the bus first dropped us at the engine for some photo opportunities then back on the bus to transport us down to our carriage.

Around 10am we pulled out and shortly after finishing a rather nice lunch we pulled into Katherine for our trip to see the famous gorges. Katherine is a few degrees hotter than Darwin and the weather was rather oppressive.

We arrived at Nitmiluk National Park and boarded a large punt-like craft for our trip down the first gorge. At the end of this we walked some 450 metres across a large rock bar to pick up another punt and explored the second gorge.

On the cliffs overlooking the rock bar were some amazing ancient rock paintings. The views in both of the gorges were spectacular and I can highly recommend a visit here. We were fortunate to have a very knowledgeable guide.

We noticed on the way in signs saying the gorges were currently closed to swimming and canoeing. Apparently during the wet season the floodwaters cover the rock bars separating the various gorges and salt water crocodiles can move up and take residence in the gorges. At the start of the dry seasons, the authorities conduct a six week survey period (they were currently in week four) where they apply various techniques including traps to see if any salties have taken up residence. If they have not found any trace after six weeks, they open the gorges to swimming etc. Our guide told us that then, after at least 200 tourists have gone swiming, the locals start using it.

We headed back to the train to cool off, have a beautiful dinner and start heading down the track to Alice.

Our hotel is a building which could have been kindly described as an architectural disaster even when it was built back in the 1980s. It has not weathered the tropical environment very well, maintenance apparently has ceased several years back and it is now very tired. Our room has two levels with the bed up a flight of stairs . As the head of the stairs arrives near the foot of the bed, night time expeditions take on certain element of risk

We headed out around 10am to catch the Hop on Hop off bus. We had an interesting ride around Darwin’s environs. It is unrecognisable from the Darwin I knew 50 years back. One shot l thought you might like. This is called the Duckpond and is where the fishing fleet docks.

We got off the bus at Cullen Bay where we planned to have lunch. We had lunched here 10 years back and had been really impressed. Unfortunately, something, I assume we can safely blame Covid, had sent almost all of the restaurants and shops there to the wall. There only seemed to be one restaurant operating and that one only just. It was all very depressing.

So we fed the fish and Jeanette patted the brass crocodile and we waited for the hop on bus to arrive and beam us out of there. This it duly did. We boarded the bus but when we went upstairs we noted some of the seats had been wet by rain so we retreated downstairs. At the next stop a large group got on and headed upstairs, the bus moved off then the rain hit us. At the next stop all the upstairs lot came down looking like drowned rats. The rain continued to grow in intensity till the water was starting to come through the floor above us in increasing quantity.

We abandoned our sinking bus at the Waterfront precinct , sprinted through about 5 yards of torrential downpour to the verandah that ran around one side of the precinct, found a nice restaurant and settled down to lunch and to wait out the storm which lasted around two hours.

After around two hours the rain stopped, the sun came out and the humidity just went off the scale. We walked back to our hotel. Unfortunately this route took us past Paspaly pearls and it proved a little difficult to persuade Jeanette to keep walking.

At 5pm got picked up for an evening dinner cruise on the Harbour. The water was like a millpond and the cruise operator was very efficient with great staff. As we set off on the cruise we passed by a Royal Navy River Class patrol boat , the HMS Tamar. I doubt getting from England to Darwin in a vessel that size would have been all that easy.

We had a great night. The views of the city were amazing.

With our travel plans upended over the last couple of years, we decided to gradually get back into the travelling gig with a trip on the Ghan from Darwin to Adelaide with stops at Katherine, Alice Springs (to check out Uluru and Kings Canyon) and Coober Pedy.

So it was an early start and off to Tullamarine Airport. I am always interested to see the march of technology in air travel and this trip did not disappoint with humans now totally eliminated from the check in and baggage drop phase.

We boarded our aircraft then had to sit on the tarmac for around two hours while they sourced a replacement for a missIng crew member.

This delay meant we did not get into Darwin till around 5pm. We checked into our hotel then went for a walk along the edge of Darwin’s Harbour and watched the sun set.

We then had a very nice dinner (barramundi, of course!) in the front garden dining area of the Novotel Hotel.