The Desert

Just starting the story of our trip into the desert (Pictures to follow)

Thursday saw us meandering off into the desert from Alice Springs. 

Well, that may be a bit melodramatic as we simply drove down the road to end up at Curtin Springs, some 100 odd klms east of Ayers Rock.

Why stay there? Well, they have powered sites for caravans and that meant we could use the air conditioning. In the over 40 degree heat this is an essential for Karen and damned nice to have for anyone anyway!  They will also let us leave the van there (free of charge) while we are off seeing our daughter in Warburton.

We spent a happy couple of hours in the bar there (yeah, typical) chatting to the 87 year old original owner of the place (his son runs it now) about his life and very interesting it was too. He arrived there 57 years ago with a few cattle and his wife and they lived under a bough shelter for 3 years while he built up the herd and a house. It is now a big concern with cattle and tourism being the biggest parts of the business. 

Friday 13th - We left Curtin Springs as soon after dawn as we could manage and headed west. Laura had organised a permit for us and we were happily contemplating a look at Ayers Rock and the Olgas as we drove through, but bureaucracy struck at the park entrance. 

Some officious jobs worth told us that our permit was from the NT/WA border and through to Warburton but didn't cover the part from Yulara through to the border. Go to the Information Bureau and get the correct permit she said, so we turned around and drove back to town to get it.

The information bureau was closed but a passing ranger told us to see the police.

The police looked puzzled and said "You don't need a permit".

So we drove back to the park entrance to meet the khaki clad defender of the faith back at the park entrance who told us that the police were wrong and if the info bureau was closed we'd have to organise it through the Central Land Council in Alice. Some 500 klms away. Apparently we could do it on-line (sounds like a good idea) and then print it out for her. Hmmm. We are a little short of printers in the Pajero, so after a few increasingly heated words she opened the barrier so we could drive round and return to Yulara (or Alice) but somehow I managed to mistake the road for the border for the one to Yulara and we ignored the permit nonsense and headed for the border.

Why we need permits to travel on a government funded public road is something that gives me the major irrits. I could get annoyed with the idea of needing a permit to enter a town as well - hell's bells, you don't need a permit to enter any "normal" town so why do these communities need protection? Then again, they do need some careful handling, but if we allow them to self exclude from Australian society then they will NEVER be part of our society and they will just be a drain on our economy instead of contributing to it. The best that could be hoped for (as far as the rest of us benefiting from this section) is that it will provide a training ground and an area of study for anthropologists.

Anyway, rant over.

We suffered the couple of hundred klms of pretty awful road to get to the border with the Pajero handling the crippling corrugations and soft sandy sections really well. The dash looked as if it might fly off at any time though! 

Then we hit the border and the road instantly changed to a smooth dirt highway capable of handling 100+kph speeds safely.  I love WA!

Corrugations as we leave the Olgas (in the background) but it was to get much worse.

Pretty country for the most part.

The border at last! The road improves hugely after this point.

We stopped at the Warakurna Roadhouse for an excellent coffee and a chat. We also headed down the track to Lasseter's Cave, but Karen groaned at the interruption to the journey so we stopped for lunch and then turned round and headed off to Warburton again.

On the way there we came across a Commodore full of locals with two flat tyres and while I was happy to take a message to Warburton to get them some help, Karen insisted we repack the Pajero to take one of them with us. I have to say that my nostrils objected strongly to this and I am not sure we will get the smell out of the seat. Still, we did the good deed and upon arriving at Warburton we found that we also had a puncture in a rear tyre.

Stupid 18 inch wheels! 

The local roadhouse fixed it for us for $40 so all is good again.

It is worth noting that most of this trip was done in temperatures of 45 degrees. Damned hot in fact!

Still, when we got there we were able to catch up with our daughter Laura and her dog Bruce.

She showed us around the place and while there isn't that much to see there were a few things noteworthy including just how popular the pool is with the local kids (40 odd degrees? Who can blame them?) and some of the artwork.

This mural based upon the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima shows a group of men raising the aboriginal flag. Good to see that some pride exists in the community.

We took Laura's dog for a walk to a pond formed by a break in the water supply line. The locals keep it like that to water the brumbies and the camels as well as a lot of other wild life.

These were a couple of the brumbies.

Bruce likes a jump in the water as well :) 

The camels were more wary than the brumbies, but they were still there.

As you can see, the area has a bit of a fly problem!

As we drove back on the Monday to collect ur van at Curtin Springs we came across a whole mob of camels on the road - check out the pictures. There were over 50 of them visible in the scrub next to the road.

On our way back we called into the Giles weather station and saw the grader used by Len Beadell's Gunbarrel Construction Company.

After a fuel refill at Warakurna we decided to stop at Lasseter's Cave for a sandwich and coffee and marvelled at the man who ended up camping out there for 20 days after his camels bolted, and doing it in January 1930. It must have been so hot and uncomfortable.   

The story is written in the signs below.

And this is the actual cave. As I approached it, two owls flew out of it just whistling past my ears!

Once we hit the bitumen (oh glorious smooth bitumen) we decided to go to a hotel at Yulara and grab a cold beer. Majorly pissed off when they refused to serve us as we weren't guests, ah well, there was a beer waiting in the fridge for us when we got home to the van.

Or so we thought. It turns out that the fridge failed and all our food and drinks were warm. We chucked out almost everything and ended up having beans on toast for dinner with a couple of beers in the Curtin Springs bar.

Problems with lousy roads over, we turned back  towards the Stuart Highway, but after about 30 klms I noticed that the van seemed to be at a bit of an angle so I pulled over to find that one of our tyres had totally disintegrated and we were running on the rapidly disappearing rim! Check the picture to see what it was like.

To make matters worse, the van jack could not go down that low so we ended up jury rigging a ramp to give us the clearance to allow me to change the tyre. I will have to get a new rim and tyre now.

I just worked out that visiting Laura has entailed an 1,600 klm round trip, two punctures (one repairable and one a total loss), days on end with temperatures over 40 degrees, some awful roads and some less than wonderful hospitality from the park gate ranger and the hotel in Yulara. It was worth it to see our baby girl though and to meet her cracker of a dog - Bruce.