Uluru to Katherine

Day 7 – Uluru to Alice Springs

This update has been a bit late in being posted but we continue our trip, traveling from Uluru through to Alice Springs. This visit to Alice will only be overnight so no real items to post. We did however walk from our accommodations at the MacDonnell Range Holiday Park to the Alice springs show grounds to watch the Fireworks display for the end of the show. No photos but the fireworks were great, going for quite a long time. The kids loved it and it was if I planned our arrival just for this.


Day 8 – Alice Springs to Wycliffe Wells

The next day saw the kids go to the weekly pancake cook-up at the caravan park, whilst we were left to pack the camp up. Today’s drive, again quite uneventful, took us to Wycliffe Wells. This town consisted of only a petrol station and caravan park. That’s It. Once we arrived and set up the kids went on a Train ride around the park and the driver explained the history surrounding the town and the region from pre-war days up till now.


The park is listed as the UFO capital of Australia, and is decorated with murals and figurines of Aliens and action figures, quite a hit with the kids. They also had an extensive bird collection.


Day 9 - Wycliffe Wells to Banka Banka Station

After packing up the camper we headed down the road to the regions tourist draw card, the Devils Marbles. This outcrop of rock boulders was heaps of fun to walk and climb through, with all of us enjoying ourselves for an hour or so. The scenery from the top of the rocks was great.

The end of our day was spent at Banka Banka cattle station, where we had the first real rest of the trip. We arrived just on lunch and set up under the shade of a great tree. We then proceeded to have afternoon naps and rest before we tackled bush walk to the top of a hill behind the station for some views. The station is an oasis in the region with nothing either side of it for about an hour each way. The sites were unpowered but if I were to rank the places we have stayed so far I would say this is the best park we have been at.


Day 10 - Banka Banka Station to Tindell (Rachels House)

The next day we sped along the highway with one destination in mind, Rachel’s. We had a few stops along the way as the first of our sickies too hold. Caitlyn came down sick first. We arrived at Rachel’s house in the early afternoon. We spent about 1 week in Katherine before we begun the journey to Darwin

Coober Pedy to Uluru

Day 4 – Coober Pedy continued

We spent the first half of our day in Coober Pedy walking around the town and inspecting all the Opal in the shops. There is some very nice Jewelry here. After lunch we went on the Redeka Coober Pedy Tour that takes you out onto the opal mines and to some local tourist spots. Our first stop was the Underground Church and town cemetery. We also stopped at the local Golf course, no grass to be seen.

We then went out onto the Opal Fields for a talk on the various ways in which Opal is mined. The methods used included digging shafts, of which there are millions amongst the various fields, and then tunneling underground following any seams of opal you might find, and another method is the open cut, where a digger is used to dig out massive amounts of the ground, which is then fed through a noodling machine, equips with a UV light which fluoresces the opal making it easy for the operator to find.

Our next stop was the “Break Aways”, which is the remains of an ancient coast line.

The last stop for the day before a return trip along the Oodnadatta track was the Dog Fence. The dog fence is a fence installed to keep dingos out of fertile lands and extends over 5000km.

Day 5 – Coober Pedy to Uluru

This was one of our longest drives, however the view at the end of the day was well worth it. We stayed at the Uluru camp grounds in Yulara and if we climbed the hill behind the camp we could see both the Olgas and Uluru.

We went straight out that night to view the Uluru sunset, along with hundreds of others.

Day 6 – Uluru and the Olgas

Today we went out to “climb” the rock, not fully appreciating what this was to mean. We arrived to the base of Uluru to be shocked fist at the number of people actually climbing it, and secondly how hard this climb was going to be.

We decided to walk around the base first, and spent about an hour doing this. Each corner held a new vista and something to discover.

We did decide to do some of the climb but only went as far as the start of the chain. Coming down was more of a challenge than going up.