Red Centre by Tank

by John Keeble

Quite suddenly, too quick to respond, the track dipped into a 50 foot riverbed section of deep sand, snaking round bushes and into a tight bend to somewhere out of sight... the 4WD rocked down into the sand and I grappled with the steering wheel and the gear change to keep up the momentum and direction.

Then, with hardly time to breathe, we were through it and up on the other side, back on the hard track that sees a vehicle perhaps once every two or three days in the hot season of Australia’s red centre.

This track, into N’Dhala gorge about 30 miles north of Alice Springs, was easy compared with some that we were warned off, including one where mere chance had saved the lives of three travellers whose vehicle had got stuck in sand. In such unforgiving terrain, where the daytime temperatures can nudge 50C, you need to listen to the locals... where not to go, who to tell on the other routes, carrying plenty of food and, the most important of all, lots and lots of water.

This was part of a wonderful 10 days on and off the road from Alice Springs to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), and returning on the long, rough Mereenie Loop road through areas so hot and barren that it was worth driving back 35 miles for a slice of cold melon. Twice.

Of course, you don’t have to do it the hard way. You can rent a motorhome with every convenience, including TV and video. But you have to accept the limitations on where you can go.

We wanted a 4WD that would take us to the big sights and also let us explore off the surfaced roads and into the wilds of the mountain ranges and aboriginal settlements (where they allowed visitors; many did not).

We picked up a converted Toyota Landcruiser in Alice Springs. The first thing we noticed was that it felt more like a tank; and the second was how interestingly different it was to drive after a saloon car on UK roads.

Then we took it to... the supermarket. You know, just like they do at your local Sainsbury on a Sunday morning. But this was different, we were reckoning on doing anything up to 800 miles through places where there was not even a puddle, let alone somewhere to top up water and food supplies. In the event, we found supplies of some kind every hundred miles or so.

A slight complication for us was that the red centre was in the grip of the worst heatwave in living memory... and the Landcruiser’s ‘parked’ air conditioning came in the shape of a six-inch office fan that ran on the powerpoint in the back.

But, heroes that we are, we set off on the 275-mile journey (441km) to Yulara, the centre servicing the Uluru tourism demand. We trundled out of Alice Springs on the Stuart Highway, stopped for a good roadside breakfast, and then a few hours later, we turned right on the long road to Uluru. It was a six-hour slog with the vast areas of nothing punctuated with spectacular sights, like the 350m-high Mt Conner table top mountain, a vast slab in the flat landscape.

Yulara has been purpose built just outside the Uluru national park. Locals and imported workers staff it. But the only people using it, apart from a few aboriginals in the supermarket and post office, are Australian and foreign visitors to the rock and Kata Tjuta. There are three hotels, ranging from swish and expensive to extremely swish and very expensive, big camping grounds for vehicles and tents, restaurants, the all-important fuel station ... wild dingoes, a variety of birds including a flock that adopted us and our food for the four days we stayed there ... it was a good place in a beautifully desolate landscape.

It was there we got to grips with hooking up to the electric power and water supply... and producing meals with our onboard two-ring gas cooker. It was the kind that people use when camping and, even taking into account setting it up on a door-hinged table, it was adequate for good meals... we knocked up, as a fairly typical meal, a curry dish, a soy stir fry and some boiled rice for two, plus some salad chilled in the fridge.

Amazingly, there was evidence of rain when we arrived and, several times, the rain kindly washed our 4WD while we were camping overnight ... and, even more kindly, brought the barren landscape alive with flowers and insects.

If you see Uluru, it is wonderful at any time - but never so beautiful or so interesting as when the sun rises for a new day or when its spectacular colours fall into darkness.

On our first morning, we woke from the sauna of a night to the sound of our alarm clock talking to us - yes, I know, it was terrible but it was all we could buy in Kakadu national park when our travelling clock was eaten by a crocodile (not really, I just dropped it) and, after a while, the new clock sounded like an old friend except when I set it wrongly and it crowed like a cockerel.

Anyway, we left the camping area in darkness, got to the national park entrance and paid our A$25 (£10) each for our three-day passes to Uluru and Kata Tjuta and drove on for our first up-close glimpse of the rock. By dawn, as the thick light was striking deep rust reds into the rock, we had driven around it and found a good place to watch and photograph. This is a major advantage of having your own vehicle. A coach visit from Alice Springs is a great deal better than nothing but your own vehicle gives you the freedom of choice and a few days give you the chance to dig into the interesting attractions of Uluru and Kata Tjuta.

With our vehicle, we saw the rock from every spectacular angle, stopped where we liked (not so easy in the busy season: we were there in low season), got a lot of the easily-accessible information about cultural meanings, spent time with a park ranger who took us on a walk round part of the base and talked about the rock art, aboriginal history and culture, and flora and fauna (this was free but, amazingly, no one else turned up for it - half of all visitors merely want to climb the rock, which is offensive to aboriginal people). We also joined a paid-for guided walk with an elderly aboriginal woman.

Of course, it was touristy but what people got from it depended on what they wanted... my wife June got a great deal of spiritual interest; and I was fascinated by how the detail of the rock had been drawn into the historic life-meaning stories of the local aboriginal people. And here, like many places we visited while on the road in various vehicles, the rock paintings and their meanings were fascinating, less in the art than in showing how a pre-writing society signposted their lives for survival.

On our last full day, we drove the 30 miles (48km) to Kata Tjuta, a long string of giant rocks rising from the flat areas around them and visible from the ground at Uluru. And, having driven around the rocks, we left the Landcruiser parked while we walked up a path, into the rocks across a wild landscape, and eventually to the breathtaking views of the Valley of the Winds. The flowers were out and everything was idyllic.

The next day, we set off for a slow drive to Kings Canyon, indulging ourselves with what we really enjoy... exploring. We saw Mt Conner in the distance, turned off along a promising but unmade road and, for the first time, engaged the 4WD - it was tremendous and gave us a taste of seeing what isn't visible from the main highways.

A little later we chanced our (almost non-existent) 4WD skills in an area of salt beds before turning on to the Mereenie Loop, a long stretch of unmade road that eventually reaches Alice Springs (if you were going for comfort with a mobile home, this would not be open to you).

Some hours later we reached Kings Creek Station, a fuel stop, small shop and eatery, a campsite for vehicles and tents, and an activities centre (even including helicopter flights) - more a place for younger people, perhaps - and we stopped for fuel, a break and a drink. It was the first of three visits... the chilled sliced melon kept drawing us back.

An hour on was the Kings Canyon Resort campsite and we were offered a pitch. The views were stunning: as we ate our meal in the open air we watched the sun transforming the landscape as it dropped behind the mountain range that holds the canyon itself.

The vehicle got us to the various canyon access points and we walked where we could... mostly alone in a landscape written by nature and rewritten by the people who have lived there.

The most spectacular experience was to climb, at dawn for some protection from the blistering heat, to the rim of the range and walk round the canyon. The sheer drops of hundreds of feet, the maze of weathered rock domes, the Garden of Eden green area at the bottom of the gorge, the wildlife and, exhausted, the long climb down - this adventure alone would have been worth taking the rough 4WD option rather than missing the area in a comfortable mobile home.

The further along the Mereenie Loop we went, the rougher the road seemed to get with wind rippling that rattled the vehicle and us, and only engaging the 4WD made it safe for outback novices like us.

By the time we got near Hermannsburg, an aboriginal settlement, we were looking for somewhere to stay and turned off to the Wallace Rockhole aboriginal village where there was a locally-run camping site. The hard Mereenie Loop surface gave way instantly to softer red mud and every yard was a joy.

We stayed overnight on the campsite, met and paid the people running it the next day, and went off with one of their maps to see the water hole. It was one of the most beautiful areas in a land full of wonderful sights, a combination of scenery and rock art.

Eventually, we drove on to the MacDonnell ranges, returning to an area we had partly explored in a saloon car. This time, with the 4WD, nothing was off limits. We voluntarily stayed away from the places that might kill us at that time of the year...

We stayed at the Ross River Homestead’s campsite - the only other person on the site was Paul, one of Homestead's workers who had set up semi-permanent home there. He gave us a good rundown on local conditions, including warning us off a canyon where he had found foreign tourists who had been stranded for three days after getting stuck in sand.

One of our first jaunts was on the track into the N’Dhala gorge ... our first real encounter with deep sand. But we weren't worried: we had taken the precaution of telling the campsite owner where we were going and when to expect us back. As it turned out, we had a great time full of excitement and adventure.

The vehicle also gave us access to the historic Arltunga gold-mining area, completely deserted during our off-season heatwave visit. But we had good fun, despite not being able to find a manned ranger station to tell of our visit and return expectations. We left a note at one ranger station... it was still there unread when we returned.

It would take a book to describe all the canyons and off-road areas we visited. Every one was worth a detailed description and, in a way, we produced just such a record - they formed part of the 8,000 photographs we took during 10 weeks of travelling in Thailand, Australia and Singapore.

By the time we dropped off the Landcruiser to Britz in Alice Springs, we were quite sorry to see the end of our 4WD adventure ... and absolutely delighted to see a bed again.

On the road

1. Book your vehicle very early. In Australia, rates get higher nearer the departure time (same with hotels).
2. If you get a 4WD, try not to take too much luggage. We left 60% of ours at a motel.
3. If you are not confident about your two-ring cooker skills, try a few meals before you leave. Supermarkets are good; shops outside the bigger population centres are far less well stocked.
4. Check carefully insurance cover on the vehicle... indeed, any vehicle you hire in Australia because they have various localised exclusions (e.g. if you hit an animal after sunset, you're not covered).
5. Fuel prices seemed to be similar
to UK prices ... same with the supermarket food prices.
6. It is recommended not to stop or pick up people at the roadside whatever the circumstances.
7. Think water all the time, both the supply and the constant topping up of your body. With a vehicle and the red centre, forget UK conditions ... Buy
your water in 10 litre containers.

First published in VISA issue 69 (Oct 2006)