From the outset, this was an
ambitious trip - we were moving most days
(rest days were one in seven), leaving camp at 8am, and most days on
the
road until 4pm. Pre trip meetings ensured that this was
understood, and a 'practice' trip at Easter to the High Country was
held. Any touring holiday is a compromise between getting to camp
early or achieving new destinations - and this trip was packed with
destinations (and not forgetting that the journey in between them being
just as important!)
If you are looking at our trip and wondering whether to do it (and in
the same time frames), if you are ambitious, go for it - it can be done
quite easily (we were lucky and all breakdowns seemed to be on rest
days so the convoy was rarely affected). If you want less
time on the road each day, or more rest days, you will need to take
more time.
Things we would definitely do
the same include:
- Hay River - absolutely beautiful, and changing scenery the
whole way. We took three days out of Birdsville and it was
quite do-able, though we didn't take the turn to Lake Caroline (extra
20km). You could easily spend another day.
- Batton Hill Bush
Tucker Camp - a great destination at the
end of the Hay River - the tour was a little low on bush tucker (wrong
season), but very high on cultural discussion
- Iga Warta -
excellent camp fire - aboriginal stories in
native tongue and then again in English - would love to do the full
bush dinner. Rest day required
- synchronising times on cameras - when sorting 7,300 photo's
from five cameras, it was a whole lot easier if you could sort by
date and time - and then delete/keep as required.
- Take at least one spare shock front and rear - we only
needed one, but it's small insurance for what could be a quite
reasonable problem
- Pub at Eulo is highly recommended - but if you camp, there
are three roosters to contend with!
- Boggy Hole was first class. Lovely camp site
about a km before the one marked on the map - on the left as you travel
south, on the high ground - see photo's - you won't miss it
Things we would look at doing
differently include:
- An extra day at Uluru if you want to fully do both Uluru
and the Olgas. We had time for:
- climbing Uluru
- Sunset Viewing
- Sunrise Viewing
- Gorge walk at the Olgas
- 10am tour of Uluru
- Cultural Centre
We didn't
have time for the
Valley of the Winds walk at the Olgas, or the full walk around
Uluru. Above is just what our family did - other families
did different activities - if you want to do more, you'll need two full
days (we had less than 24 hours), but then again, as a good friend says
"Always leave something for next time..."
- An extra day at Alice Springs - much to see and do around
the general area
- We took some advice from Lindsay Bookie on a different
route from Batton Hill to Ruby Gap. Having confirmed the
route on the map, we took it - to find that half way down the track,
there was a gate with 'no through rd' on it - we had to turn back and
go the original route (Cattlewater Pass), which was very nice - but the
delay meant that we didn't make Ruby Gap - next time, either go through
the gate (we were told afterwards that we should have ignored the
sign), or just use Cattlewater Pass in which case we would have made
Ruby Gap easily.
Things we might not do next time:
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