We were collected around 6.30 this morning from where we were staying, and set off immediately.
The landscape began by being the 'Desert River' environment we had seen in the Desert Park yesterday. The Todd River is just a wide bed of sand, but there is obviously water below the surface, since there are trees and plenty of other vegetation.
Incidentally, Alice Springs is the venue for the Henley-on-Todd regatta every August, when teams build boats with no bottoms so their feet come through, and hold races on the dry river bed. It has had to be cancelled a couple of times because there was rain and the river bed filled with water.
Gradually, the landscape became arid semi-desert, with scrub and clumps of grasses on the bare red earth. There were huge patches which had been burned, either as part of land management or as a result of wildfires, so the view was always hazy. And for quite a lot of the morning, it was cold!
Our first stop was at Stuart Wells Camel Station where you could ride a camel if you wanted. Having ridden a camel in Egypt, we weren't keen, nor were any of our fellow travellers, but plenty of other people wanted to do it.
I must say these camels looked much easier to ride than the ones in Egypt -these ones had stirrups and handles on the saddle to hold on to!
I wandered off to look at the baby camels, who were quite cute. One was missing its mother and kept trying to suckle from its sibling, who was extremely fed up with the whole exercise. Poor little things! There were also some llamas and some kangaroos; the latter wanted to be outside hopping off somewhere and were nosing miserably at the corner of their enclosure and looking hopefully at me. There was also a dingo who was treated as if he were a dog. He didn't look too thrilled about it though!
We made two other brief stops, one where we turned off the Stuart Highway, and one at Curtin Springs roadhouse. The latter is a fuel and food stop on a 1million acre cattle station also called Curtin Springs, and we did see a few cows. We saw what we thought was Uluru in the distance, but it was a different outcrop, Mount Connor. It was hard to see anything though, because of the smoke haze from the fires.
At about 1.30 we arrived at our camp site, where we made lunch in the camp kitchen. When lunch was over, we were off to Kata Tjuta, another sandstone outcrop with many domes.
It is hard to describe the appearance of these, rising straight and sheer out of the arid semi-desert, and a deep red colour. You can see they are a bit hazy because of the smoke, which makes it difficult to see them from far away, but you can understand why Aboriginal people feel it is a sacred place.
We walked along one of the trails which go between the rock domes - being such a sacred place, you are not allowed to climb them. The trails are rocky and rather difficult, being a sort of volcanic stone stuck together with mudstone. The section up to the first view point is is rocky, but not too difficult, but it becomes harder further on.
The sandstone walls of the rock domes have been polished by the wind and the appearance is quite striking.
After the first viewpoint, I went back to the bus. Paul went on, but said it became much steeper and even rockier, so I was glad I had gone back to the bus.
We went on to another viewpoint to see the sunset over Uluru, but it was rather disappointing because of the smoke haze, which was not improving.
Then it was back to camp to prepare supper. Tonight we are supposed to be sleeping in a swag under the stars. I am going to try it, as long as it doesn't rain. There has been some rain today, so I am hoping there won't be any more. If it rains, I will be in the tent!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment