Half-lap Day 103: The Nullarbor

I got up just after sunrise and it was cold and beautiful outside the tent, the early morning sun shining on the few trees and over the low bushes surrounding the campsite. I went for a bit of a walk to find more firewood, there were a couple of dead trees not far from us and I was able to find plenty of branches around them that would get the fire going again for the morning.

I sat near the fire for a while and then as people woke up, got breakfast ready and we started to pack up. Everyone was cold and wanted to sit near the fire, which helped us feel warmer and may have slowed down our packing a bit. We were ready to go around 10.30, the last (by a few minutes) people to leave the campground.

We continued eastward along the longest straight stretch of road in Australia. There was a slight slope to parts of it, so we could only see 5 or 10km ahead, and when it was flat, the road shimmered out of sight in the distance, so we didn’t ever feel like we got a strong visual sense of how long it was – but it did take a long time to drive, without a bend. It wasn’t boring though, the scenery was fascinating, sometimes low, sparsely scattered trees, sometimes plains of low bushes, all very dry and inhospitable looking, but always quite pretty. It was exciting to get to the end and have the road bend a little. There weren’t a lot of bends over the course of the day – mainly the road was straight with the occasional meander to one side or the other. Therre wasn’t a lot of traffic either,  some road trains and caravans coming the other way, and occasionally another truck or van going our way, often we were the only vehicle we could see.

Part of the longest straight stretch of road

Not long after we started driving we saw a dead camel by the side of the road – our first wild camel sighting and we all felt it was a sad way to start. About 2 hours later we saw live camels, four of them to the right of the road,  in an area with no trees. We pulled over and watched them for a while, very excited to tick another desired animal off our list. Later on I saw a pair of emus – the kids didn’t see them though so we hoped that we would see more as we kept driving.

Camels

Around 2pm we were approaching Madura, and saw a sign to a lookout. I think this is the place someone told me about, way back in Hahndorf, so I suggested we pull over. It was a fairly bumpy road in to the lookout, and then the view was incredible. The road sloped down quite steeply just after the turn off to the lookout, and below us was the Nullarbor Plain – flat land for as far as we could see, with low, silvery green bushes and grass, and the occasional tree scattered all the way across. From where we stood the trees looked like emus – rounded green tops with thin trunks. To the north of the plain, looking straight ahead in the direction of the road, was a large escarpment – I had no idea that it even existed. From the lookout we could hear, and then see as they came past, the road trains and the caravans laboring up the hill as they headed west.

View from Madura lookout

We had lunch while we were stopped, then drove down the hill ourselves, onto the plain. The road followed the escarpment for the rest of the day. The terrain was similar all the way, with the occasional stand of taller gum trees (not tall, but not the tiny trees that were over most of the plain. Many of the rest stops had these taller trees. 

Once again the sun was setting fast as we drove away from it. We had hoped to get to the border, or at least close to it, today – however there was a strong vote for stopping at a rest stop with a toilet, and the last toilet was at Jilah Rockhole, about 70km before the border. We arrived there about 4pm and found a nice clearing between trees and set up the tent – the sun was close to setting by the time the tent was up so it was good timing. We wandered through the trees to find wood for a fire, finding a pile left by someone at one of the spots near the back (again, it was a very large camping area, with lots of relatively private spots because of the trees) and Tony found some wood he could cut with his axe. Caitlin had a bit of a scare as we loaded wood onto her bike – 2 wolf spiders were nestled together in a hollow in one piece of wood, and it took a while before we found them on the ground (after we flung the wood away) to make sure that neither of them were still on her bike.

We got the fire going and I made a cup of tea, while Tony cooked dinner. I hung some washing so it could start to dry in the morning, and Caitlin went for a ride to see if she could find anyone heading west so that she could give them our leftover onions – we can’t take fruit and veg into South Australia and we’d used all the onions we could manage. We also had carrots and apples left and felt confident we could eat them in the morning.

Caitlin had finished reading the 8^th Harry Potter book in the morning, and I got it out to start reading. While I did the washing LiAM started to read it and made his way through most of the first scene – that’s all 3 kids who have started to read by reading a Harry Potter book.

Caitlin hadn’t come back when our sausage and egg burgers were ready, so LiAM and I went to find her. She was talking to couple from the Central Coast, who were travelling west and had taken our onions gratefully, and as usual we shared tips on places we’d been and things to do. We walked back over and had our dinner and enjoyed sitting around the fire.

The toilet was interesting – a drop toilet, not surprisingly, but with a very narrow hole leading from the bowl down into the pit underneath. Normally with the narrow hole, the toilet has a water pump that lets a small amount of water be run down the bowl after use, or a bucket of water with disinfectant in it and a toilet brush that can be used to clean the bowl. This one had neither – just a stick (an old broom handle) that could be used to poke down anything that hadn’t made it through the narrow hole. It was pretty gross, and seemed to get worse every time we went in there. I’ve recommended to my friends who are following us across the Nullarbor in the next week or so that they don’t bother stopping here just because it has a toilet…

We heated up our hot water bottles on the fire and snuggled into bed, with beanies and socks and neck warmers, to read Inheritance, which is getting extremely exciting.

Half-lap Day 65: Broome

We had a quiet morning around the tent, playing some games on the iPad and organising our things a bit. Caitlin and I went to the office and got a heap of brochures about Broome activities so that we could start to figure out what we wanted to do while we are here. We booked a pre-sunset camel ride for the kids and I in the afternoon. I had a shower (the best shower I’ve had on the trip so far). Tony took the kids for a swim while I read my book for a while then got ready for our day out.

We had lunch and then went for a drive through the town, having a look at all the shops as we drove through. We went to Town Beach and looked out across Roebuck Bay, very cool to see a large expanse of turquoise water. We continued on down to the port, saw the jetty and lots of big tanks (for oil maybe?) and lots and lots of road trains which were dropping off or picking up their load. We drove around to Entrance Point and I was amazed at the red red craggy rocks, next to the blue sea – my brother had told me how incredible this looks and it was even better than I’d expected. I got out and took a few photos, then we drove along the dirt road to Gantheaume Point, past the race course (no horses there today) and then back up to Cable Beach.

Entrance Point

We arrived around 2.30 and I realised I’d forgotten to get cash for the camel ride. Tony dropped us off and went to get the money while we wandered down to the beach. As we walked down a little boy put out his arm and said ‘$20!’. We stepped around him and laughed and I chatted to his mum about how my kids make up impossible-to-guess passwords to stop people coming past. While we were talking a camel train walked past – these were the ones we’d be riding, very exciting to see them wander down on to the beach.

We followed soon after. The sand was white and soft and the blue ocean was flat (it was low tide) and seemed to stretch out forever. Again, I’d heard a lot about Cable Beach and it was as beautiful as people had said. We could see the camel’s footprints in the sand – we’d watched how their feet spread out as they walk on the soft ground, and they make massive footprints. We walked around the rocks on the beach to the 4WD beach and my first thought was that it was a carpark – there were SO many 4WDs there. People were setting up to watch the sunset in a couple of hours, lots of them had their awnings out with tables and chairs underneath – a great place to sit and spend the afternoon.

We found our camels, and Tony arrived with the cash in time for us to pay. He wandered down to the water while we had our safety briefing and so on, then was back to take photos of us once we got on the camels. Caitlin and LiAM were on the 3^rd camel from the front (Karbul) and Millie and on the camel behind them (Jack). Millie and I got on first, and I held on tight to her as the camel stood up – with the back legs going up first, it’s quite scary and we needed to lean a long way back to stop from going over his head. He got the rest of the way up and Millie was unsure whether she wanted to stay on for the ride. I suggested she wait and see what it was like once we started moving and then she could ask to get down if she wanted to.

Caitlin was excited to get on a seated camel and have it stand up (the ones at Uluru were already standing and the kids got on from a platform). We headed off and the ride was slow but bumpy. I held on to Millie for a while and gradually we both relaxed. One of the guides ran up and down the line taking photos on everyone’s camera, so we got shots on LiAM’s, Caitlin’s and my cameras, Caitlin’s iPhone and Millie’s iPod. The walk was beautiful, with the ocean on one side and the sand all around. Watching the camels walk was interesting too, and there were 2 other groups walking as well so there was lots to see. Clothing is optional as you progress further up the beach, and we saw one naked man taking photos of the camels before he lay down on his back to sunbake.

The camels turned around after about 15 minutes and we headed back to where we’d started. The sun was getting lower and the shadows of the camels were very cool. Another one of the guides made his way along the line, talking to each rider about the personality and history of their camel – ours was a real joker and the other kids were on a very reliable camel.

We arrived back at the start and Millie and I were a little nervous about the camel sitting down, it was fine though (less scary than standing up). We climbed off, and received our free drink vouchers and a free pair of pearl earrings for me. We wandered down through the rocks and looked at the rock pools while we waited for Tony to come back from where he’d been walking on Cable Beach.

Looking at the tide charts earlier I’d realised that this evening was the lowest tide that we’d be here for, and it was low enough to see ALL of the dinosaur footprints at Gantheaume Point. Most low tides are only low enough for one lot to be exposed, but tides under 1.4m allow all 3 sites to be seen. So we headed straight there –there were a lot of people there already. We wandered down the rocks of the cliff – discovering halfway down that we’d gone the more difficult way – and then across the flat rocks at the base, looking in the rock pools as we went. We found lots of crabs and lots of creatures in shells, but were unsure where to go to find the dinosaur prints. It was a bit weird, lots of people wandering around randomly on these rocks, looking for something that wasn’t very big and no one was very sure what it actually looked like. There were lots of false alarms ‘oh, this might be something…’ then every now and then someone was say definitively ‘There’s one here’, and people in the vicinity would scurry over (although I was surprised, there wasn’t a lot of collaborative looking, people would find one and then not pass on the information to people coming the other way).

Anyway, someone pointed us in the direction of a footprint and when we saw it, it was really obviously a footprint – like a large bird print, bigger than my hand. 3 large toes and a hell, preserved in the rock. I was blown away, so incredible to think of an actual dinosaur walking here 120 million years ago, and we can still see signs of it. The kids were more interested in the live animals and glanced quickly at it then went on looking for crabs. We wandered around aimlessly for a while longer. Someone told us that the large round sinkhole type rockholes were dinosaur prints as well, but I wasn’t sure if that was right or not. They were different sizes even when they were together and some looked just like natural rockholes. After a while someone pointed out another site, there were 2 prints here, made by feet that were still birdlike, but more webbed. These ones were eroding a little. We pointed them out to passing groups, then I wandered off to look for the 3^rd site – but I wasn’t sure whether these ones were the high water ones or the low, so I wasn’t sure in which direction to look. Someone said he knew where they were, so I followed him, but he couldn’t find them again. His friends found an octopus in a rock pool though, so I went and got the kids to come and have a look at it. The guy was poking it with a stick and it would squirt water out and change from striped to white. It was cool to watch, even though I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to be poking it like that. LiAM and Caitlin said they’d seen a couple of octopuses that they thought were blue-ringed octopuses. I didn’t think they were found in this part of Australia, but when I looked it up later I discovered that they are. That’s an animal that really scares me, but luckily the kids are smart enough not to touch animals they aren’t sure about, so they just looked and didn’t antagonise them.

The sun was setting while were wandering around on the rocks – making fantastic colours on the red cliff wall. We decided to head back as it was nearly dark, then an American couple came past, asking if we knew where the prints were and hoping they hadn’t come too late to see them. Caitlin and I showed them the first one we’d found, and they had a map so we discovered that the 3^rd one was only 17m from that one (and the webbed prints were the high-water ones). So we looked in the vicinity of that print, climbing in between rocks near the water’s edge, and I noticed Caitlin step on a depression – we shone our lights on it and we’d found the print!!!! I was so happy, as I’d really wanted to see all 3 while we had the chance, and this tide was the only one that would allow us. It was hard to photograph in the dim light, but it was very exciting to see it. It was similar to the first, perhaps more spread out and bigger. We made our way back across the rocks and showed them the webbed prints, then started to clamber back up the cliff. It was a bit tricky in the low light, and at one point I dropped my lens cap and had to fossick around in the dark to find it, but we made it up with no real problems. The view from the top was quite spectacular, the horizon was red and the rocks of the cliff were silhouetted against it.

The others were waiting for us at the car, everyone very tired. We stopped at the shops to get milk and salami, then came straight home for tea. Millie cooked macaroni and cheese for herself and Caitlin, LiAM had an egg sandwich, and Tony and I had rice noodles with pesto and salami. Afterwards we cleared the table and headed to bed as quickly as we could.

Half-lap Day 24: Finke River -> Alice Springs

We were camped quite near the highway and we throughout the night we could hear road trains coming for a minute or two before they actually came past. The noise would gradually get louder and then it would be like an aeroplane going past, and then it would recede over the next couple of minutes. It wasn’t too disturbing though, there weren’t a lot of them and in between it would be completely quiet.

I was up in time to see the sunrise, I went down to the river and watched it slowly come to light and enjoyed the reflections in the water and the incredible peacefulness. I saw a few tour buses pass over the bridge on their way to Uluru – would have been an early start from Alice Springs! As the morning went on we saw many army trucks going south, big trucks carrying lots of supplies – and 2 of them were carrying tanks! That was pretty exciting to see.

Early morning on the Finke River

As we were packing up the tent we found a tiny scorpion inside it, running along the floor near the wall. We all watched him for a while, then I scooped him up in a cup (I did squish one of his pincers as I tried to catch him) and threw him outside (away from the tent). We chatted to our friends about the Ernest Giles track (I was thinking we might leave the trailer and just drive back in the 16km to see the meteorite crater) and they said it was the worst road they’d ever driven on, corrugated all the way with no respite. We decided to give it a miss, if they struggled in their huge 4WD. The other couple had broken several things on their van and both of them said everything they had was covered in red dust.

An extra camper in our tent

The kids wandered off to explore while we finished packing, then I went to take them down to the river while Tony put the last things on the top of the trailer. I found them talking to another family, a mum with 2 boys. We chatted for ages, and Tony joined us after a while with everything packed up and trailer attached and ready to go. Eventually I took all 5 kids down to the river, the water was beautiful and they were soon all completely wet (in their clothes, but since it was a hot sunny day, and fresh, flowing water, I wasn’t worried). They played in the water and in the sand, which was a bit like quicksand in parts, it was easy to sink in up to the knee. I waded around a bit then found a shady place to sit and watch them and enjoy the location. Tony joined me after a while and then the other mum and we chatted and the kids played for a couple of hours. It was a pretty magical way to spend the morning.

Swimming and exploring the sand in the Finke River

We got everyone out of the river and headed off around 1pm. We’d planned to stop at Stuarts Well for fuel and lunch, but the kids had had a sandwich before we left and Tony and I were happy eating in the car, and we had enough fuel to get to Alice Springs, so decided not to stop. There was a camel farm though that the kids wanted to see, so we pulled in to check out the camels, and an emu who was being amorous with the fence, a dingo on a chain and some birds. Not the greatest animal place we’ve seen so far.

There were several ranges of hills that we drove past before reaching the McDonnell Ranges and then Alice Springs – a bit different seeing many hills after so much flat land. We drove in to Alice Springs through a gap in the ranges and it was exciting to be here. We checked out a campground which was only $11 a night, but none of us felt comfortable there and the reviews we read were very mixed so we decided against it. We were stopped by the police on the way in, who asked if we were going to the bottle shop or the campground – later when I saw police checking ID outside liquorland at Coles we realised that the police check ID before anyone goes into a bottle shop. I hadn’t seen that anywhere before.

We drove up Anzac Hill – a lookout over the city – to rest for a bit and figure out where we would stay. It was a cool place to get a bit of an idea of the layout of the town, and the kids thought we were going to physically look for caravan parks from up there – we did it the digital way however. There was a place out of town where we wanted to stay, we rang them but they were full, so we found a place in town that seemed all right and not too expensive. It seemed nice when we arrived, nothing special – it’s a fairly basic caravan park with everyone laid out in a neat grid, not much atmosphere but clean and quiet and a good place to rest for a few days.

I crashed when we arrived. Last time I arrived in Alice Springs I was overwhelmed and a bit teary and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do – I thought that was because I’d just been on a 20 hour bus ride from Darwin. But this time I felt exactly the same. It’s an odd place – part city, part country town, part regional centre, part cultural and arts centre, part violent and unsafe, part touristy, part multicultural, it’s hot and dry and sometimes stifling, it’s a remote town but so full of tourists that it doesn’t feel remote – I am reading Tracks by Robyn Davidson (a lady who came to Alice Springs, learned about camels and rode a camel train from here to the Indian Ocean) and she says that having the ranges so close to town drives everyone a bit crazy and I see what she means.

Tony recognized that I was not coping well so he sat me down and made me a cup of tea before we set the tent up. The kids explored the park a bit and eventually I was up to helping set up. We used the free wifi for a bit, I sorted out my washing, and then we went for a swim in the pool. The water was freezing and I just had a quick dip before I got out, Tony stayed to supervise the kids and I went to Coles to stock up on much needed supplies, and got a hot chicken for dinner. I enjoyed driving around the town and discovering where things were, I even went over the river to get some hot chips to have with our chicken (there are Indian food places everywhere here, but only 1 fish and chip shop. Shopping in Coles felt like shopping in Griffith, very multicultural and the food options available reflect that.)

We were in bed pretty early, read for a while then off to sleep, keen for a quiet relaxing day tomorrow.

Half-lap Day 20: Uluru

Everyone woke up really early – I could hear dogs barking which I thought was strange, I hadn’t heard that here before, and by 6am all of us were awake and chatting which is very unusual. Later when I heard about the earthquake (6.1 on the Richter Scale, at 4am this morning, a few hundred kilometres from here) I wondered if that is what had disturbed us (and the dogs). None of us felt the quake, but the energy in the air and ground would have been different afterwards and animals would have been behaving differently.

LiAM and I went back up to the main campground lookout to see the sunrise, this time the rock turned pink and then lit up as the sun came over the horizon. Tony and the girls watched it from a sand dune near where we are camped. Once again it was so quiet up there, after the sun had risen though there was much talk of the earthquake. I saw my friend from the day before and we talked a bit more about the walk around Uluru and our plans for the day.

We had breakfast, played cards and got Tony and Caitlin ready to go for a bike ride around Uluru. Caitlin met another girl a little younger than her and spent time chatting with her about horses and travelling. Tony and Caitlin headed off with their bikes around 10am, LiAM and Millie played on the iPad in the tent, and I did some dishes and tidied up the campsite a bit.

The bike ride was much easier than the walk and they both really enjoyed it. They said it was the easiest ride they’ve done so far, and the long bit of the walk didn’t seem anywhere near as long on the bikes. When they finished they let us know, and we got ready and caught the shuttle bus (we just missed one by about 30 seconds so waited 15 minutes for the next one) to the camel farm where we met the others. We wandered around and looked at the many many camels in their pens, then the kids asked if they could do a short camel ride. They were happy to go on their own, so the three of them rode in a camel train around a big yard, with Uluru in the background. They seemed nervous but excited, and they all really enjoyed it.

Once they were off and said goodbye to their camels we looked at the baby camels (so cute!) and then bought some food to feed some of the other animals – kangaroos (who stayed up the back of the pen and weren’t interested), ducks (who were very keen), an emu (who pecked the food right out of our hands and was quite terrifying until we got used to him – I spilled my entire first handful when I screamed (a little) and pulled away as he pecked at my hand – but I tried again and we found it was easier if we just had a few pellets and he was good at just picking them up one at a time, if we had a whole handful he’d try and get it all at once and that was scary. LiAM’s hand got pinched a little by his beak, but he tried again and it was all part of the experience) and a water buffalo (who really really loved the food and kept putting his head over the fence towards anyone who looked like they might feed him – he used his long bluish tongue to lick the food from our hands, so we all ended up feeling rather slobbery. So cool to feed and pat him though and have a really good look at his horns – they looked like metal, but are made of hair).

Our food was eventually all gone and we went back to the gift shop. Millie bought a plush camel, and the others bought magnets or keyrings of the camel they had ridden. I bought a tub of natural fly repellant, the staff said it was incredible and I’d heard other people talk about it too – it did make a different, the flies still buzz around but don’t land and stay on our faces.

We eventually said goodbye to the camels and went back home for some lunch. We had eggs and baked beans and spaghetti, while Tony watched the football and Caitlin talked to her new friend, and then I took the kids for a swim. It was nice to swim on a warm day, although the water was still freezing. We didn’t swim for long as we wanted to head out to Kata Tjuta and needed to be there well before sunset.

We quickly got ready and drove out to Kata Tjuta – about 50km. It was cool to see it up close after seeing it on the horizon for the last several days. I’d forgotten how many different rock formations it is, and it’s so much more impressive up close than from a distance! We drove to the Valley of the Winds and did the short walk to the first lookout. I had a little dummy spit on the way as I felt like everyone was complaining every time we walked anywhere and it was spoiling my walk and I wanted them to enjoy it as well… I was quite embarrassed afterwards, I really had wanted to avoid doing that, I don’t want the kids to feel they HAVE to do something just because it’s what I want to do. Everyone decided to keep walking and we talked about it a bit, the kids said that they aren’t complaining so that we will stop walking, it just helps them feel better when they are tired, and they are usually happy to be there. I was really embarrassed then because that’s usually how I feel when I’m walking too ‘why am I doing this, it’s too hard’ and then feel great when I stop to rest and look at where I am or reach my destination or whatever. So we all felt a bit better afterwards and I promised I won’t try and fix things if they talk about how hard the walk is.

The lookout was nice, I’m glad we made it. A view further in to the Valley of the Winds, and a pretty view back the way we’d came. With the blue sky the red rock looked so vibrant, especially with the late afternoon sun. As we walked back to the car, the sun on the rock changed so much, into a very brilliant red, as it sank behind a nearby hill and perhaps a few clouds. We thought that was the sunset, and it was quite beautiful, then looked at the time and realised there was still 8 minutes until the sun actually disappeared. We jumped in the car and zoomed around to the sunset viewing area and were there in time to see the last rays of sun on Kata Tjuta, even more impressive with the wider panaroma from being slightly further away.

We had decided to eat there before driving back, so made sandwiches and hot chocolates and ate at the picnic table. While we were eating the moon rose from behind the rocks – it was almost dark by now so it looked amazing, this bright light silhouetting the rocks from behind. We took a few extra minutes to soak up the sight, then packed up and headed back towards Yulara. The national park closes at 7.30pm at the moment, and we passed through the exit at 7.27. Heaps of time.

A very quiet night back at camp, Millie played with her camel (who had been having a nap all afternoon), Caitlin talked to a friend on the phone and LiAM played on the iPad. We were in bed as quickly as we could be and I read until I was falling asleep.