Alice Springs (for Mar. 5)

We had three choices for today. First, the moderately strenuous, 6 km, 3.5 hour Kings Canyon rim walk. Second, the easy, 1 km, 1 hour Kings Canyon creek walk. Third, sleep in. As tempting as sleeping in was, we chose the walks. We were up before 5:30. Me for the 6:15 pickup for the long walk; Celeste because my alarm woke her.

My crew drove in the dark, arriving at the canyon at first light. The first stretch was a climb of about 200 metres vertically at a 45 degree angle. That was the hard part, although there were some smaller challenges later on. The terrain and vegetation were very interesting. The canyon is the eroded remains of sandstone formed from dunes, as evidenced by the layers being put down at different angles. The vegetation is more of the uniquely adapted desert plants that we have seen for the last couple of days. The adaptations they have made for drought and fire are quite amazing. At the half way point we descended into a deep gully that had trapped quite a lot of water where many people from other hikes were swimming. After climbing back out, we finished with more interesting formations around the canyon rim.


Celeste’s group left at 8 for a walk along the dry creek bed of the creek. I will let her tell her story, but she finished up about the same time as our group and we bussed back to the hotel for a shower before hitting the road at 11. We stopped a short distance down the highway at a touristy stop that served camel burgers. Pretty good. I’m not sure how I would describe it, but it wasn’t much different from beef. From there we set out for Alice Springs, arriving in our hotel room at 6:30. Again, the terrain was pretty similar, except for some ranges of rocky hills. This riding the bus is a lot more relaxing than driving. And I find that I am able to read a lot more too! The price you pay is being stuck with someone else’s timetable.

We drove through several of Australia’s famous “cattle stations” but only saw a few cattle. These ranches are typically more than one million acres, and I can see why. There sure isn’t a lot of feed out there. And they have developed an easy and efficient roundup method. They set up corals with water troughs and in and out turnstile type gates. The cattle become habituated to the water trough. When they want to round them up, they just lock the out gate and come back every few days with a cattle truck.