Time to go home

The worst part of any holiday is going home (in my mind anyway. We are 1633km away from home, towing 2.2 tonne of van, and some very weary legs, knees and children. 

The majority of this trip until we reach Pt Augusta is also without Telstra service. I am not sure how we are going to survive without posting hourly updates on Facebook .....

We had originally planned this part of the trip to take two nights, however we have agreed to just get up and drive until we can’t drive anymore, and see where that gets us. 

Despite a horrible headwind that meant I was chewing through closer to 18litrea per 100km instead of the normal 12-13, I kept my foot down and soldiered on. 

The kids kept themselves entertained in the back seat playing Minecraft on their iPad’s, whilst Tracy dozed and jumped out of her seat in fright occasionally when I powered over a cattle grid across the road. 

We eventually stopped at 5:30pm after a 8am start and could hardly walk. 

We were at a roadside stop (called Bon Bon) with about 10 other vans with another beautiful sunset and the most incredibly clear night sky I have seen. The stars and Milky Way are just amazing to see when there are no city lights around

It was also nice to have a night where the temperature stayed above 5 degrees again.....

The morning greeted us with our last country sunrise, before we started on the last leg home. 

This was a little slower and thankfully a little easier on the fuel use thanks to a tail wind. We stopped at Pt Augusta for lunch and gave the caravan a wash at one of the commercial wash bays, and then made a bee line to pick up our very missed and loved Taz from mums....

Battling peak hour Thursday night traffic with the van on the back is not my favourite thing to do, but we eventually got home and started the arduous task of emptying the van. 

The rains are coming tomorrow, so it is going to be fun removing everything that can be removed to try and get 6 weeks of red dust out of it, but I am sure every last bit of dust will be a reminder of the amazing journey we have just completed. 

And No... I am not going back to work tomorrow just because I got home a day early. 

(143 hours, not 43.....)

Our last walk

The sunrise over Uluru is supposed to be almost as spectacular as the sunset. Apparently. 

We get up at 6:15am in -2 degree weather and speed off into the darkness. Along with about 50 other cars in front of us. 

At least by the time we arrived at the Eastern car park and walked to the vantage spot, it had warmed up to 0 degrees. 

As we stood there in our our 4 layers of clothes, we heard somebody mention that the sunlight doesn’t reach this side of the rock in winter. It would have been really nice to have heard that yesterday 🤭

Once the sun was up and the temperature had dropped back to -1, we drove to the main car park and started our big base walk. 

There are many different areas of the rock that are fascinating to see from different angles, and despite still not being able to feel our fingers through the cold, we all chatted  about the adventures so far and what we interpreted from the story placards located around our trail, as well as what we had learned yesterday from the cultural tour. 

After what seemed to be an eternity, we reached the car park again. By now, both Tracy and I were not able to feel our knees and legs, and we collapsed into the car for a lazy afternoon. 2 hours and 50 minutes for nearly 11km. Certainly not any type of record, but a time that we will remember. 

Kata Tjuta - The Olga’s

Surprisingly we woke up able to walk and so headed back into the National Park. This time our destination is The Valley of the Winds , at The Olga’s. 

This turned out to be. 2.5 hour walk winding through the base of The Olga’s to an incredibly mesmerising two sided lookout. 

It was still mid morning so the North Eastern side was completely in shade, with the opposite side just starting to light up as the sun peered over the top. 

The composition of these rocks are very different to that of Uluru. This is a mixture of rock, mud, pebbles and granite formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, as opposed to the solid sandstone construction that is Uluru. 

The track led us through some warm sunny patches, to some cold windy valleys, to some shady rock filled mountain sides. We decided not to walk the 7.4km loop as the rest is just through scrub, so we turned around and once again hobbled back to the car,

After lunch we visited the local Arts and Cultural Centre in the Town Square, where they had a free tour by a local Aboriginal guide who told us all about the local wildlife, scrub and the beliefs surround Uluru and Kata Tjuta. 

It is always great to hear facts about the places we visit, rather than just looking  without understanding. 

Time to relax with a few beers, and get ready for sunrise viewing and the base walk tomorrow around Uluru. This is a 10.6km track with a few diversions to see local wall art and other interesting parts of  Uluru - neither of us are sure this is a good idea with our knees and legs feeling the way they are, however it is a goal we always said we would do, so we are determined to do (with a new box of Nurofen in our pockets!)

Uluru

We arrived at the campground at around 1pm, set up in the overflow area and then went into town to find the visitor centre and get ourselves orientated. The forecast was for another windy day tomorrow and hopefully calming down after that. 

Tonight we went to see Uluru at sunset, along with an incredibly expensive locally purchased bottle of wine and some beers, and some cheese, crackers & chips to celebrate my birthday that was on Thursday. 

Despite the cold, it was great to see this monolith change colours as the sun disappeared behind us. 

Morning came and we were back at The Rock prepared for the base walk around it. To our surprise it was open for climbers. I am not sure we knew what we were getting ourselves for bro, but 5 minutes later we were 50m up. 

History tells me I should have stopped there, however we continued the climb. Never in our lifetime did we imagine how much more difficult this was than what it appeared to be. But we did it. The climb had its moments with Dylan losing his hat in the wind, and the car key that was in a strap around my neck broke off and started rolling down. Thankfully Tyler was behind me and fearlessly leapt sideways to grab it without a second thought. (Apparently he has a fear about being stuck at Uluru for the rest of his life with a car but no key.  ). We got to the top of the chain section after a few rests and admired the view. “We’ve done it” we muttered to ourselves. 

Apparently not. 

Apparently, the end of the chain marks about 1/3 of the way. But it is also the hardest part. So off we went, up and down the valleys on top of this not so flat topped rock. In fact, some of the valleys up here were almost as difficult as the first section, especially for this of us with bung knees and the agility of a rhinoceros. 

But the views were fantastic and worth every minute of the climb. 

We had found out from all the people that passed us that the rangers had closed Uluru for climbing. They didn’t tell us the reason, however once we were at the final point and noticed we were the last ones here, we also noticed the wind was gusty and strong enough to carry me into the next Galaxy.  (That is one hell of a strong wind by the way...)

I also noticed a huge dust storm in the East getting closer to us by the minute, so we hurried off to begin our descent. 

By now, I had a real appreciation for why the rangers close Uluru for climbing. At times, we actually had to hide in valleys to stop being blown off, and it was getting quite frightening for the kids. 

As we approached the chain, I decided to forge ahead with Tyler and Kayla and get down as quickly as my knees would allow. Dylan had waited back to five Tracy some moral support as she occasionally slid down on her backside, and hobbled down backwards for the other parts, showing off her backside to all the amused spectators below watching us. 

But we did it. Sore as hell and 3 very relieved kids who had actually thought we weren’t going to make it at some stages when the wind howled through us, but we did it. 

Back to the caravan we went, had lunch, warm showers and a few beers. Not much else happened this afternoon... just chatting about the amazing experience we had just completed. 

Kings Canyon

It was freezing cold again in the morning, but we are in the middle of the Red Centre in August so we cannot expect anything different. 

This morning we drove past bro Kings Canyon and took off on the famous rim walk. This is a 6.3km walk that starts with 500 steps almost straight up made from natural rocks. Somehow I made it without having a heart attack and we began the remaining 6km walk. The surrounding rocks and bush made us feel like we were walking on the moon (but apparently I have never been to the moon so it wasn’t an accurate comparison). 

The kids were climbing on ever bit of  rock they could find and had to be reminded many times that there is a minimum 100m sheer vertical drop below them. 

It was nearly 2 1/2 hours later that we finally made it back. My knee had popped again about an hour earlier and I was hobbling down the mountain waiting for this moment to pop some pain killers, and the relief couldn’t have come soon enough. 

We had lunch that had been packed in our ever faithful cooler bag, and then headed back, but diverted off to Kathleen Springs. This was a Gorge that the early settlers used to heard cattle into with its never-empty water supply, and a narrow neck where they built a fence to keep them in until the trucks would arrive later in the week to cart the animals off to market. 

Dylan couldn’t contain himself, despite the rim walk earlier this morning, and jogged most of the track at least twice whilst we gobbled along slowly admiring our surroundings. 

We decided we hat we had seen all that we wanted to here, so tomorrow we were off to Uluru and hopefully achieving our goal to climb it. Assuming our knees will let us. And the wind