Day 3 in Central Australia

We travelled a long way on day 3. We woke early to see the sun rise over Uluru. Unfortunately, we underestimated the time that it would take to get to the sunrise viewing area (and we got stuck behind a tour bus), but still managed to get to the viewing area before the rock became deep red. Sunrise was not as dramatic as sunset. The colour changes were much slower (and it was rather cold - the snowman in the photograph is actually Christine trying to keep warm).

The plan for the day (which we didn't think that we'd be able to do - although we did!) was to drive all the way to Ormiston gorge in the far West of the West Macdonnell ranges. Joris and I mainly drove. We again went past Mt. Connor where we spotted an emu (see photo) and dingo. We stopped at a road house for breakfast and the bloke working behind the counter was Canadian and knew Ottawa well.

Half-way back to Alice Springs, we decided to take our little hire car along a long (30km) dirt road. I had the pleasure of this drive. We went bouncing along and skidding in the sand dunes (hoping that we wouldn't get a punture). Anyway, the reason for this detour was to see the Henbury Meteorite conservation park (I'm not sure how you conserve meteorites!). The meteor that formed the many craters in the area fell about 5000 yrs ago (interestingly, the guy in the road house told us that it fell in the 1960s - he was only out by a few thousand years!)
The two photos of this area are of Joris and Christine on the first, large crater and the second is of Christine walking along the rim between two craters.













We then drove back to the main highway and continued towards Alice. After a short stop to replenish supplies in the town we headed West through the ranges. This was my favourite drive. Christine and Joris were snoozing and so I had the mountainous scenery to myself for quite a bit of the trip. We finally made it to the camp ground by 5pm, set up our tents and went on the "Ghost Gum" walk. Wow! We walked high up the cliff edges and looked down on the dry river bed below. As it was getting dark, I sneaked away from cooking (leaving Christine and Joris to make a great meal) and sat in the gorge next to a water hole and tried to photograph the little rock wallabies that were bouncing around.

This was so stunning that, after dinner, we all took our torches and sat around the waterhole. This is where Christine had a big shock when a dingo came silently up behind her. It didn't seem at all scared of us, but it slowly walked back into the shadows. We also shared our area with a lovely rock wallaby that decided to sit on a rock next to us for a while.