Monday 16th June –Monday 23rd June

We got our caravan serviced today so this afternoon we moved to the caravan park across the road. We are staying at Mcdonnell Range caravan park. It is a lot better for the kids here as they have a playground and two jumping pillows.

On Tuesday we took the car to a Toyota dealer to get it serviced. We have a bit of running around to do the next few days as there are a few things we need. We need to get everything done here in Alice Springs as we won’t have the facilities once we leave here. They have everything here, so we did a big grocery shop to stock up for when we leave here.

There are a lot of aborigines here; they don’t seem to bother you though. You are not allowed to buy alcohol until 2.30 in the afternoon and you are only allowed to buy 2 litre casks of wine. If you drive past the bottle shops just before 2.30pm, you will see lots of them just waiting to purchase their alcohol.

On Wednesday we went for a drive to Hermannsburg. It was established in 1877 and is a 125km drive from Alice Springs. It is the birthplace of an aboriginal watercolour artist Albert Namatjira.
We did not actually get out of the car once we got there. It is an aboriginal community and it was very dirty. There was rubbish just everywhere. All along the side of the roads were beer cans and rubbish. We could have done a tour of the museum and old mission which you had to pay. It looked rundown and grotty so we kept going.


Hermannsburg

Hermannsburg

We went to Stanley Chasm to do a 15 minute walk which we had to pay as it is now owned by the aborigines. You get sick of having to pay for things after a while, you have to pay to look at Ayres Rock, go into national parks etc. Afterwards we went to Simpson's Gap.

Stanley Chasm


Simpson's Gap



On Thursday we went to the School of the Air. It was quite interesting to see how the kids in the outback do their schooling. Afterward we went to the Reptile Centre, that was really good. They had lots of different snakes and lizards. You could hold the python and some of the lizards if you liked. The kids really loved it, especially Jesse as he loves all the reptiles. You will see by the photos I did not hold the python, I am a little scared of snakes, well alot scared of snakes.
They had one crocodile there called Terry, it actually did not look real but it was.

Just out of Alice Springs there is a place called Emily Gap and Jesse Gap. We could not come all this way and not go. It was a cool and windy day yesterday.

Afterwards we drove to Ross River, we saw two wedge tail eagles on the side of the road eating a dead kangaroo. They are huge.

JESSE GAP

EMILY GAP




Wedgetail Eagle.

On Saturday David went to the Truck Museum with Bruce. The kids and I did not want to go. That night we had some visitors of people we met way back in Burra, so that was nice to catch up with them again.

On Sunday morning the caravan park have a free pancake breakfast so we went along to that.

We are leaving here on Tuesday morning and heading to Gem Tree. We will not have any mobile or internet service for a while.

Friday 13th June

Today we left Kings Canyon and arrived in Alice Springs.
It is good to have our phone / internet connection available again.

The site they put us on is not long enough for our caravan. We were shifted to another site which is not a very nice one. We are along the fence next to the road. It is messy and smelly.

We are only staying here as they do onsite repairs. We are going to get our caravan serviced on Monday and then go to the park across the road.

They have decent prices here so we stocked up on groceries this afternoon.

Wednesday 11th June and Thursday 12th June

We are having a couple of quiet days after all our walking. We will do more school work the next few days. The weather here the last few days has been warm, it has even been warm at night time which is nice as usually the nights are very cold. Apparently it is not normally this warm at night this time of year, they usually have minus four degrees. We still have been having a fire but we don’t really need one.

It is also very expensive here, it cost $4 for a loaf of bread which is frozen. David bought half a dozen beers and it cost him $24.

Tuesday 10th June

Today we did a few walks at Kings Canyon. We did the outer rim walk of Kings Canyon. It was 6.5 kms.
The walk through Kings Canyon was really beautiful. Joy and Bruce have also arrived here and are camping next to us. Joy has been baking us cakes, and scones so we are very spoilt.

Sunday 8th June

We were supposed to leave Uluru today and go to Kings Canyon; we have decided to stay here one more day. We did a bit of grocery shopping today at the IGA, everything is very expensive.

Monday 9th June

We arrived at Kings Canyon, we are staying at the Kings Canyon Station. There is not much grass here, our site is red dirt. It is hard to keep everything clean. It is a nice site though, we are able to have open fires at night.

Our campsite at Kings Canyon

Saturday 7th June

Today we went back to Ayres Rock to walk around the rock. It took us three hours to walk around, it was a 10km walk. Jesse and Emily are doing a great job doing all this walking. They both really enjoy the walks and never complain. About half of the rock there were signs stating that it is a sacred area and not to take photos. Which I think is ridiculous but that is another story.

The walk around the rock was not as nice as the walk at the Olgas as the Rock walk was fenced off you could not get close to it at some parts. They even had us walking on the side of the road because it was a sacred area. Who knows why it is sacred, it did not say why it just said it was.

You have to pay now to go to Ayres Rock or the Olgas now as it is a national park. They charge you $25 per adult which gives you a three day pass which they make $8.2million a year from. We went into the cultural centre and that was so expensive. It seems that they cater for all the international tourists.

It is very busy here and seems to be very commercialised these days.
I was here years ago with my parents when there was no resort and we camped in tents at Ayres Rock and you did not have to pay.

Friday 6th June

This morning we got up early so we could go to Ayres Rock (Uluru). It was not windy which is good as they close the rock if it is too windy or about to rain.

We all climbed the rock, Jesse and Emily did a great job. Actually we were struggling to keep up. The aborigines don’t like you climbing it anymore, but we were not coming all this way just to look at it. When you start climbing it there is a chain that you follow as it is very steep. After the chain finishes you still have a long way to go. It took us over one hour to climb up to the top.

Ayres Rock

Start of the rock climb

Walking up the chain

Once you pass the chain you need to follow white lines

and keep following the white lines








View of the Olgas from the top



At the top of the rock


In the afternoon we went to the Olgas (Kata Tjuta). We did the Valley of the Winds walk. It was a 7.4km walk and was a really nice walk By the time we finished, we were all exhausted considering we had walked Ayres Rock in the morning.

The Olgas