Aussie Explorers 2017.

North Flinders Rangers. We made our way south from Maree to a small mining town of Leigh Creek. We had great expectations of finding a small modern town with all the services, but found a ghost town as the coal mine closed down in 2015. Most of the shops, hospital and houses were unoccupied which was very sad. Those still living there are optimistic a new use can be found for the town as a tourist resort but it was not happening yet.   Our plan was to travel east through the Gammon Ranges at the northern extremities of the Flinders Ranges. We travelled on unsealed roads from Copley that climbed through hills and gullies full of red gums and sandstone. Stopped a couple of times to look at rocks and found a little green cooper steaks. We found our way to Barracoola which is an old farm now taken over as the park HQ. The Park Service has doing a fine job restoring buildings and explaining the history of the former cattle run. The temperatures were also a bit stifling at 35 degree...

OUTBACK SOUTH OF ALICE SPRINGS. Our next big adventure was going to tackle some unsealed outback tracks that would takes us into some very remote and spectacular desert scenery the Red Centre of Australia is famous for south of Alice Springs. This needed a bit of preparation and planning as help is a long way away if things go wrong. So with a tank full of diesel, full water tanks, lots of food and our PLB we set off from the Stuart Highway at a small place called Cadney Homestead. The Painted Desert is an area about 100 kms east of relatively easy unsealed roads. The Gibber Plains are distinctive and a very flat landscapes laid down millions of years ago when much of inland Australia was part of a huge inland sea. This has long disappeared and some of the subsequent erosion has revealed slopes of different colour sediments in reds, yellows, browns and many shades in between. The road was rough and corrugated in places so we slowed down at the dry river crossings to protect the tr...

Hallo again, After a few days at Kings Canyon National Park we travelled the Lasseter Highway southwards to Ayres Rock. The first part of the trip down was through some very attractive desert oak forests that grew in between the taller red sand dunes. Although the vegetation is still open scrubland the scenery was very pleasant. Mt Connor came into view first which stood out as a table top mountain in the distance.  It is commonly mistaken by first time travellers as the ROCK. .....but no. We freedom camped about 25 kms from the park boundary at one of the many roadside areas that are relatively common in this part of the world. Most sites are neat and tidy but could do with more toilets! The following morning we travelled another 25 km down the road until Uluru came into view and was unmistakable, distinctive and iconicly Australian. We called into the town of Yulara which was built in 1988 to service the expected tourism boom following the return of the land to the orig...

Alice Springs. We spent a couple of days travelling down to Alice Springs. We were pleasantly suprised to find a well appointed town with modern facilities and traffic lights. We found a campground just out of town through The Gap  where we planned our stay in Alice Springs. The Prado was due for an oil change but when we rang to make an appointment we had to wait 4 days for the first time slot. So with that bit of news we planned a few days in the West MacDonnell National Park. We were also keen to go to the Desert Park which is a wildlife centre highly recommended as a place to see some wild animals. We were finding lots of birds to see but little in the way of wild flowers or other creatures like skinks, frogs or lizards. We based ourselves at Ellery Springs campground for a few days and enjoyed some walking and bird spotting. Seasonal rains in summer flood these river beds a few days each year. Once it rains the deserts come to life but so far many plants looked like they co...

Katherine Gorge National Park. Northern Territory Tropics just a little too tropical. Since my last post we have travelled some distance south away from the humid and hot temperatures we experienced on our journey north once we crossed the border into Northern Territory. We had to put our clocks forward another 30 minutes as we are now on Central Standard Time. At a small place called Threeway we hit the Stuart Highway which is one of the main north south highways between Adelaide and Darwin. The country was pretty hot and dry and we saw a number of fires lit to burn off vegetation before the wet season comes around again in November. As I alluded to in my last report the burnt look does nothing for our scenic appeciation of the landscape and seems wrong to release all that heat energy and  carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. I can't help thinking there has to be a better way to manage the fire risk and biodiversity. We found a couple of nice spots on our road no...

Mataranka Northern Territory. Tuesday 8th August. We have covered a few miles the last few days so we are having a wee break at a camp site close to Mataranka. There is hot spring here and some facilities that will allow us to have a shower and wash some clothes. The temperatures have been in the low thirties the last few days and this has made travel and camping a little more challenging. The nights are cool but by lunch time we are looking for a shady tree so we can have lunch without getting too hot. Some of the roadside picnic areas are very attractive but alot are not as well.  Sadly you see lots of toilet paper in places where visitors have been caught short. Bit poor really and does not reflect well on the people who manage visitors and roadside facilities. We are amazed how many people are moving around in caravans on the roads we have driven so far. Generally the roads are great with relatively little traffic which makes for comfortable driving. The road trains ( upto...

Richmond Queensland 28th July 2017 Today we are taking a day off travelling and enjoying 28 degrees of winter sun in Richmond, Northwestern Queensland. Over the last few days we have been travelling in dry open grassland country that has been in drought for the last five years. Normally summer rains from the tropics get things growing especially the Mitchell grass that grows on the deep soils around this area. If the summer rains are poor then farmers do it hard and things dry out considerably. It is not long before feed runs out and stock are shipped to other areas that have the feed. Many of the towns we have passed through like Longreach, Winton and Hughenden seems to be locked into the 1960,s with dry dusty sections, rough housing, old shops and only basic services. Groceries have been a little pricey as well and selection generally poor. Pubs are often the dominant buildings in town. However we have been visiting a few national parks and have done a little bit of walking i...