Friday 16/7/2010 Yulara to Kings Creek Station

(Yulara to Kings Creek Station)
Huge buffet breakfast. Filled the car up, 137 L, ($1.61/L). Left at 0845hrs to Kings Canyon. Jordan and Jack are both asleep. I am reading interesting stats, and info on Uluru and Kata Tjuta on history, geology, environment, flora, fauna, astrology and tourism. The kids will have to read it later.
Uluru is 348m high and 3.6km long. Kata Tjuta has 36 domes and is 546m high.
Yulara is the 4th largest town (population) in NT!
Cool! Little Thorny Devils can drink by standing in puddles. Water travels up their legs by capillary action to the corners of their mouth.
Time to do the King's Canyon rim walk.

The 6km rim walk at Kings Canyon took 2 hrs, 1240hrs to 1440hrs. A lot more water this time. Bad timing though. There were 2 huge tour groups we had to get past. Jordan kept sprouting interesting facts from her earlier reading.

Jack again spotted a dingo on our way to Kings Creek Station, "Dingo Boy". After setting up camp we checked on our breakfast and camel riding booking for 0700hrs tomorow, and also booked in for a helicopter flight, which the kids saved up their own money for.

Col and I had a shower, while Jordan and Jack went and bought an icecream for everyone.
Col changed the fuses in his power box which were all blown by a loose wire in the tyre pressure sensor plug (secondary to the corrugations). He fixed the loose wire and taped it up.
We have a couple of meals left over now, from eating at Norseman pub, and at Sails in the Desert. Tonight we'll have the precooked beef stroganoff and tomorow the tuna mornay. Yum.
I was just downloading and editing todays photos when the computer died. I wish I had a powered site. There is no internet here.
Time to relax with a glass of wine and my Steig Larsson book.

Thursday 15/7/2010 Yulara

(Yulara)
Slept in!!!! No tent to pack up!

Soak in the bath, out for lunch, grocery shopping, clothes washing and catching up with diaries and communication. The kids even had a swim in the heated pool. Col checked the car out. All seems fine.

Wednesday 14/7/2010 Docker River to Yulara

(Docker River to Yulara)
There were dingos howling overnight and the temperature again dropped to at least 0 C, with ice on our tents. Off to Yulara today (town near Uluru). With an extra night up our sleeves we've decided to stay in a powered site there for 2 nights to do some jobs (washing, bathing, shopping and diaries).
Driving along the kids were discussing their future career choices with us ...aahh family bonding. Saw more camels. One ran onto the road and jogged along in front of us for a bit.
Missed the turn off to Lasseter's Cave at first as it is only signed as a rest stop.

This viewing sent us off on more history lessons. Jordan and Jack are now keen to read his diary and work out where the reef of gold is. Well they've learnt about ancient maps and offroad exploration and will soon be learning to be cameleers at King's Creek Station. So there is hope!
Lasseter's Cave is amongst a beautiful mountain range overlooking a river bed, so he spent his last days living in beautiful scenery.
This was followed by a history lesson on Giles and Gibson's explorations.
Seeing, galahs, budgies, magpies and crows.

At Kata Tjuta we did the 7.4km hike through the domes. It took 1hr and 50mins at a fast pace (1200hrs-1350hrs).

It was great exercise after so much sitting, and just beautiful. They are huge.
Uluru looked purple and pink as we headed east to it.

All 4 of us climbed it to see spectacular views. Jack was very nervous, but pleased with his accomplishment afterwards. You couldn't get more respect and love for the rock than we had. We passed 2 Aboriginal girls near the top.

Huge day!!! Lots of exertion. Ended up deciding to lash out and have a couple of nights luxury for everyone to recouperate for the next part of our adventures.
5 Star Sails in the Desert.
I feel soooo clean now!