Tonight we are set up in a large private resort in this National Park, nor’ north west of Uluru as the crow flies. We travelled over 480 kilometres today, leaving Alice Springs soon after 9 am and arriving here just after 5 pm; a long day considering we were towing the van.
The first fifty kilometres of the road south of Alice Springs were relatively flat alternating between burnt off grazing land and relatively lush open woodland. Soon the road rose and fell, but only noticed because we were pulling two and a half ton. Anyone travelling the same road in a car may not have noticed it. There was little traffic on the road, but then there are few places one could have travelled from to encounter us on this south bound route at such a time of day.
We stopped at the rest area beside the bridge that crosses the Finke River, to appreciate the scene; red river gums up and down the sandy river bed, dry but for waterholes laid out like an irregular chain. The Finke River is apparently the oldest river in the world, and has the longest water course in Australia, once flowing fiercely east, cutting through the red rocks of this land, south east to Lake Eyre. Now it flows only in the wet years and then only so far, before spreading out into swamplands well north of the lake. So many ancient rivers in Australia are buried under the desert sands and it is often only by satellite image that one can trace the course of some of these rivers.
Sixty nine kilometres further south on the Stuart Highway, we arrived at the Erldunda Roadhouse, which in our limited experience of roadhouses up Cape York, across the Barkly Highway and down this same Stuart Highway, is most impressive. The service area incorporates a tavern, restaurant, fuel and convenience sales outlet, and of course the toilets, all of which have moved with the times to give the impression of modernity. As an added curiosity here, there was a shed surrounded with net wire, containing a giant sized wooden frill necked lizard and echidna. These may have been quite something in their day, but are now disintegrating. We topped up with diesel at $1.91 a litre, having been warned that the fuel price would steadily climb the further we travelled out from Alice Springs.
Here the Lasseter Highway takes one west, toward Uluru / Ayres Rock and the road to Kings Canyon. It was just midday but we travelled as far as Mt Ebenezer, fifty six kilometres west of Erldunda, where we stopped to have lunch. We had hoped that there would be a shady rest area; instead it was simply the dusty pull off for the roadhouse.
From there it was just over fifty kilometres before we turned north on to the Luritja Road, and travelled the last one hundred and sixty seven kilometres on to King’s Canyon. Approaching the park, the road passes along the southern edge of the range and the late sunlight caught the high red cliffs, promising us more marvels tomorrow when we explore this area on foot.
Our fellow campers are nearly all foreign tourists, mostly German, traveling in rented camper vans or in tour parties. Signs warn of the dingoes that roam freely about and which should not be approached. We did see one dingo and several feral horses cross the road on the way in, but have yet to see camels which also roam free in their thousands all about this area.
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