Day 9 Kings Canyon to Alice Springs

Today was “lets try going off the bitumen day”. We thought about going along the Mereenie Loop Road but thought it might be too long. Instead we thought we would try the Ernest Giles Rd of only 99km gravel and give ourselves a “quick” run into Alice. Admittedly it was quicker but the corrugations and washouts were astounding and bone rattling. The most exciting (?) point was the sand riverbed that we crossed with our fantastic car and van and great driver, Keith. It was the first real test of the 4WD and we did it with flying colours. Still don’t know why anyone would drive along such roads on purpose though. The Corolla that had zoomed through the sand riverbed in front of us (hey if he can do it, so can we!) did come a cropper and they had a rock go through their sump and dumped all their oil on the road. They made it to the roadhouse, unfazed, as a fix for this sort of thing seems to be available in the outback.

We stopped for lunch at Stuart Well and went to the Camel Farm there, met our travelling companions and the kids had a camel ride. I was still feeling a bit sore from the canyon walk and the tumble I had taken down the van steps earlier in the morning so didn’t revisit that part of the adventure from the 1986 Doncaster High Central Australia Tour. It was a short 90km drive along a VERY smooth highway to Alice Springs and we had a brief drive through town (I didn’t know where we were going) before we found the Big 4.

For those who have taken campers/vans on very corrugated gravel roads know what can happen to the contents of them and the cleaning and fixing that needs to be done at the destination. For some people it is milk, others oil or eggs. Ours was cream and cordial. We had to clean up a cordial explosion and resultant spill from the pantry and cream from the fridge. It was a truly impressive mess that a kindergarten full of 3 year olds could not even hope to replicate. An hour and buckets of sweat and detergent later (detergent is harder to clean up than cordial btw) we were all neat and tidy before the NEXT exciting thing happened.

The sound and light show of the approaching thunderstorm was very impressive (read scary) but seemed innocuous until the rain and the wind actually hit us. We were left scratching our heads as to why we didn’t think to put the fly ends out, but then WHY WOULD YOU? Its Alice Springs in the middle of Australia where it NEVER rains. Bollocks. It does so. Dinner eventually got cooked and eaten, laptops and mobile phones broken out and connection to the rest of the world re-established. Maybe this place isn’t so bad after all.