Day 17 Kings Canyon

“Hey! A dingo took your apples”, I yelled as the guy climbed out of his camper. I was returning from the showers at kings Canyon when I looked across at the impressive off-road camper and watched as the Dingo lifted the lid of the esky with it’s nose, flicked the lid up, and stuck it’s snout into the esky. When I began yelling at it to “get outa there”, it grabbed the 1st bag it could reach and ran off. About 20 meters away, it realised the bag contained green apples, dropped the bag, and headed for the camp-site where a big Japanese looking dude slept in the front of his station wagon. I walked over to him and seeing he was asleep, I threw a rock at the dingo and left the guy asleep in his car.
It was the beginning of a day of firsts. We packed up the camp and by about 9am, we were on our way along the Mereenie Loop Road through the West McDonnell Ranges for which we needed a permit from the Aboriginal Central Land Council. While the 200km of dirt road was the worst we’ve encountered, the trip was full of excitement. We sighted some more outback artwork and Justin, I found your old car. As we came over a rise about 80km along the track, we all noticed a big brown lump in the middle of the road and it took us all a moment to realise it was a camel. We then noticed about 20 more camels sitting just off the road amongst the shrubs. It’s not what the boys expected to see so they had a great laugh. As we drove along the track, we saw more and more wild camels just hanging around.
A little further along, we noticed a stack of wild horses. Considering they’re just roaming around the country side, the Brumby’s looked remarkably healthy.
I started to get a little weary so Jacqui drove for a while and in an effort to find road not so corrugated, we managed to have our 1st experience at digging the car out of the bulldust. I’d packed the shovel so well that I couldn’t get it without removing the spare wheel but fortunately Jacqui had packed some plastic plates in the car for us to use during our lunch stops. Me digging the car out of the sand with a plate makes good video. We stopped for lunch at Hermannsberg, the birthplace of aboriginal artist, Albert Namatjira whose inspiration must have come from God because it couldn’t possibly have come from Hermannsberg. Upon leaving Hermannsberg, we came across group of wild Donkeys before running out of petrol and needing to resort to the Gerry can. That was a fairly exciting moment. I unscrewed the lid of the gerry can and fuel began fountaining into the air. It took a moment to realise that I needed to unscrew the other cap to allow the pressure to equalise and when the fountain stopped, I was covered in about 5Litres of petrol. I managed to get the rest in the car and we finally got to Alice.
After a long day, we took the boys into town for their first McDonalds meal since leaving Sydney and then got us lost in the back streets of Alice, in the dark.

All things considered, we’ve had a very adventurous day.
Cheers,
Jorg