Friday 23rd July - Finke Two Mile Bushcamp to Kings Canyon Resort

Yes, it is cold enough for hat and gloves, which were donned when we called into the Glen Helen Lodge in order to collect our AU$3 permit to travel the Mereenie Loop Road, a “short cut” through Aboriginal land to Kings Canyon and onto Uluru.

Redbank Gorge was our next port of call, it’s a narrow fissure with a permanent water hole which I’m sure is refreshing in summer, but not today. SPOT

The Aboriginal rock engravings at Roma Gorge are probably seen by few tourists as the access “road” is a little unusual, you just follow the dried up river bed for 8km.

I cannot image the UK National Parks authority encouraging such behaviour, although, as Anne pointed out, most of our rivers contain water which would make driving a little tricky.

The engravings are meant to be one of the best collections of petroglyphs in central Australia, and who are we to argue. SPOT

The 154km Mereenie Loop Road saves a 500km trip via the bitumen to Kings Canyon and whilst initially the surface is good, it soon deteriorates to dried, bumpy ruts with vehicle destroying potholes to test your reflexes. To be fair it’s not all like that, once the potholes are out of the way it’s “just” badly corrugated, only improving once you reach the gas fields where they probably maintain the road for the support vehicles. We made it through though and were rewarded with magnificent views of the George Gill Range, glowing golden in the setting sun. Not so great was the sound of escaping air from one of the rear tyres, which luckily carried us the remaining 10km to Kings Canyon Resort where we could investigate the problem.

We got out the bead breaker and tyres levers, and after a couple of false starts we had the tyre released from the rim and removed the inner tube. A quick feel soon found the problem, a three inch piece of thin, but rigid, wire had penetrated the side tread and punctured the inner tube. We fitted one of the spare tubes and had the tyre back together and on the vehicle under the watchful gaze of the local dingo population who try their luck for scraps and raid the rubbish bins if they get a chance. The dingoes weren’t shy, one sat down about 10m from the Land Rover and started howling, it would have probably have carried on for some time had Anne not approached it brandishing a tyre lever and telling it to shut up (it soon legged it - who wouldn’t under the circumstances?). SPOT