Of Camels, Kings and Gemstones...

We finished our visit to the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park with a sunset camel ride and a sunrise viewing of the rock. The camel ride was an absolute hoot - Libby nearly fell off she was laughing so hard about the tackiness of it all once we were mounted on our camel (named "Killer"). They are actually much nicer to ride than you might imagine, and it was a really pleasant hour in the dessert as the sun went down over "big red". Definitely a "must do" experience. We loved it.


Yesterday morning there were at least 300 people up well before 6AM for the sunset viewing. It was pretty suprising to see park rangers directing traffic, especially as this is supposed to be the slow season!!!

After the show was over we hit the road again stopping at a road side truck stop along the way for brekky, and we were at Kings Canyon (about 300km away) by around 10AM. We found a nice shady spot (unlike Yulara!) and then headed off to the Canyon itself, which is pretty special. We didn't try the rim walk as it was already above 30C by the time we finished the canyon walk. Definitely that's something I'd do in the cool of the morning or in winter but it would have been a bit much in the heat of summer. One thing that did surprise me on the walk through the canyon was the number of paddy melons along the pathway to the canyon. I'm not sure if they are indemic to the area but I suspect that the rangers would clear them if they weren't. I was tempted to grab a fruit to try it but seeing that it's a national park I behaved myself :)

The rest of the day we spent swimming in the pool and playing pinball machines at the bar, as well as watching the dingo's snooping around the camp looking for food at dusk. A nice relaxing day!

Today we hit the road early again, packing up and on the road by 7:15 with an egg and bacon breakfast stop at the Kings Creek Station 30km back down the road. Almost 700km later we had left the NT and arrived at Coober Pedy in South Australia. What a totally incredible place! There are mine tailings everywhere .... almost from horizon to horizon!


We decided that we had no choice but to experience the place "properly", so we booked ourselves some mine tunnel space in Riba's Underground camping ground (apparently the only underground campsite in the world), and paid the few extra bucks for an Opal mine tour to boot. For $18 each this was too good to give up!