In 150km turn left

Today we got up very early to go and see the sunrise. However, we were once again almost late due to needless faff. This time driving was even more stressful – tour guides can wait, sunrises generally don’t. We barely got there in time and instead of being relaxed and having a moment to tune in, I was all jittery and stressed. Feel a bit robbed of the experience. Did I mention I like travelling alone? At least when something goes wrong I can only blame myself.

Anyway, we got back to the hostel, checked out, did some shopping, paid a lot for petrol, and set off towards King’s Canyon. Fortunately, it really picked up from then on.

The Canyon is 305km away. We took literally one turn on the way. Left. After 150km. There was exactly one other turn on this road for the entire time, and it was onto a ground road to Alice Springs. Welcome to Australian outback.

On the way, we were passing Mount Conner and Lake Amadeus, and stopped on a lookout spot which allowed us to see both. Since the surroundings can be quite Martian, I shall compare the mountain to Big Man’s Table, so flat it is. Other than that, it was almonds four hours of driving on roads that only bend about once every five kilometres (well, ok, more after we entered the dunes approaching the Canyon), through lands of no mobile signal and not even a single radio station. Seriously, we searched all available FM and AM frequencies – nothing. So, to help you pass the journey time, here are some assorted thoughts.

Desert. Notice I didn’t say we were driving through featureless landscape, which I was kind of expecting. But no, this desert has a lot of stuff on it, including bushes, grass that is almost white and looks like the hair of that android from Blade Runner, and even trees. That’s mainly desert oaks, which have about as much to do with normal oaks as New South Wales has to do with the south of Wales. Their leaves at thick and needle-like and they grow to about five metres tall.
But as we were nearing the canyon, some eucalyptus trees appeared, grass turned yellow, bushes got greener… I frankly have trouble placing this in my head as desert, as it’s just way more… alive than I was expecting. It looks like the African savannah, really – though obviously only outwardly as the plants are completely different. Thing is, when you don’t look too close, this arid desert doesn’t really look that much different from the lush forests of Nyah. Well, ok, of course it’s different, but just not as different as I would expect a forest to be from a desert. Anyway, at some point we saw a tumbleweed, which sort of restored my faith a bit, but it still just doesn’t feel quite right to me.

We’ve seen some burned bush on the way. Or burned desert? My point exactly. Anyway, burned plants, lots of them. And lots of new ones growing right out of the ashes. Amazing.

We also saw many dry river beds crossing the road, with water depth measures on the side of the road, going to up to two metres. Suddenly I’m quite happy we’re here in dry times, looks like we could easily get stranded for days if a river cut off our path.

Flies. Charlie says we’re lucky to be here in the winter, as we don’t get too many flies. There are still quite a lot of them around, and when we stopped to see Mt Conner, they were just overwhelming. That’s because there are cattle farms nearby (who the hell thought it’s a good idea to have them in the middle of the desert?!). And because the toilets on this stop are everything you’d expect from an outback longdrop. Ewww! Anyway, long hair turn out to be an excellent defence.

Ok, back to the road. We took our single turn and a few hours later we arrived at King’s Canyon. Ok, I admit, there was another turn on the way, about 2km before the canyon – the straight road leads to the hostel, for the cannon you have to turn right. But that’s it. We arrived just after midday, in the worst heat. There are a few walks you can take there and we decided to take a short walk through the canyon first, before we go on the longer and more exposed route around the top. This worked pretty neatly, as the bottom route was quite cool, even without any water in the stream flowing right now. We had some nice views, stopped for a lovely lunch, but didn’t get to the end of the valley – it was closed because recently a massive boulder dislodged from the canyon wall above and destroyed the viewing platform and path. Double shame, it would have been really cool to see this!

After this short walk Dee decided to stay in camp and read, while we went on the trek around the canyon top. To be honest, the thought of just chilling with a book in these gorgeous surroundings sounded fantastic and I really wish we were here for longer and had time for it. But the walk was absolutely amazing! Next time we just need to schedule in more time.

After the ascent it’s all reasonably flat – small ups and downs, but not much. Great views down the canyon and lots of rocks to jump on, which turned out to be quite dangerous – I ripped my trousers on the crotch at some point and spent the rest of the day with extra ventilation. The surroundings made me think of the Green Mars from the Mars trilogy – a planet of dusty red ground and weirdly huge geographical features, but already somewhat terraformed, with some hardy plants almost bizarrely adapted to really unlikely conditions. The otherworldly effect is magnified by the fact that this place used to be the bottom of the sea millions of years ago and you can really see this in the sandstone, with many rocks showing wavy sea bottom patterns.

Just as we thought we got used to it, we were thrown right into the Lost World. In some cracks at the top there are sudden explosions of green with palm-like cicada plants which survived almost unchanged for millions of years – it really looked like at any moment a triceratops will peak out from behind the next rock. In the end we did see a few lizards, but all of the rather tiny type – maybe 15cm long, ones that run really fast on their hind legs only.

After we climbed the other side, a new view appeared – hundreds of domes of weathered sandstone, like termite mounds or heads sticking out of the ground. Whole fields of them, wherever you look. Seems almost like a massive sculpture, not a natural phenomenon. Walking on rewarded us with fantastic views of massive cliffs with vertical or even overhang walls, huge flat rock planes, and pretentious late-middle-aged Polish tourists. Listening to them talk was painful and I tried to avoid them, but they kept popping up all the time. Bloody Polish people, they’re everywhere.

Oh, BTW, did I mention that this is where in Priscilla, Wiem if the Desert the girls did their Crock in A Dock on A Rock? Cool, eh?

After four hours we got back down, met with Dee and drove off to the hostel. This one was so much better than the one in Yulara! Both were the outback resort type, with long single floor buildings of some 6 guest rooms on each side, separate toilet and kitchen buildings, some food places, bars, and common areas. But the one near Uluru was super cramped, the buildings were on top of each other, the toilets were manky and had massive spider webs under the roof, and the food… you know my opinion of the food. Plus our room was tiny, just enough for the two bunk beds (imagine how stuffy it got there with four people!), and the common area played really loud 90’s pop hits all the time. And this was the most expensive accommodation for this entire three week trip! The King’s Canyon resort was the same thing but done properly. There was space, the rooms were bigger, there were camping sites, decent food, silence, and just an overall wonderful atmosphere. And dingos. Did I mention the dingos? Well, they were chilling all around and stealing people’s food. Anyway, the place was great and it would be wonderful to just camp there for a few days and chill.

When we got there, we went straight to a small swimming pool. After the walk the cold water was perfect – though Eva and Charlie decided that they will cool down just fine with only their legs in. Then I ran to the observation spot to catch a glimpse of the sunset over the mountains around the Canyon, and we had some grilled steak for dinner. I spent the rest of the evening walking around, stargazing, stretching on a playground, and writing this diary. Another pretty awesome day.