Day 22 – 14/4/2011 – Kings Canyon to Hermannsburg

Day 22 – 14/4/2011 – Kings Canyon to Hermannsburg

Today we decided that we would save some kilometres and one days travel and to do this we would take the Meneenie Loop Rd.  This road would take us straight to Hermannsburg, the only hiccup was that the road was 200kms of dirt.  We had though spoken last night to 6 male grey nomads who has just arrived at Kings Canyon and had come via the Meneenie Loop, they advised that the road was good, not many corrugations and yes we would be able to easily take our 22 year old caravan on this road with no problems.  All they suggested that we do was let the tyre pressure down a little and we would be OK.  There was only one male grey nomad in the group who didn’t agree with his friends and we decided to go with the majority view!!!

So with confidence and bravado we purchased our pass to travel the road through Aboriginal land and headed off about 9am.  The road started off with lots of corrugations and then in the distance we could see dust coming innocently we thought this was maybe the road works that the grey nomads had mentioned!! How wrong we were all of a sudden we were pulling over to the side of the road to let a three trailer road train past!!  There was no way the big road train was giving us any room!!!  This should have been an obvious bad omen for us but alas we headed on down the road.

As we kept driving over corrugations Pete began to groan and moan something about “I hate corrugations!!” we were only 20kms into a 200km trip!!  Then just before we headed up a hill there was a blessing delivered – bitumen – but only for 5kms just to get us up and over the hill and then dirt again…….5 hours later we got to Hermannsburg!!!  It was a slow, long, corrugated, potholed road that was completely unsuitable for our caravan and even though we have a 4WD the car went out in sympathy with the caravan and the cigarette lighter and the console lights stopped working!!!  Pete drove the whole way and to say that he was unhappy was an understatement!!!

The highlight of the trip was firstly spotting some very healthy looking donkeys and then seeing lots of wild brumbies along the way.  The scenery was also spectacular although I must admit that we really did not stop to admire the view on the way, Pete did though stop so I could photograph the brumbies and donkeys.  That wasn’t really hard though because for the 200kms we rarely got out of second gear!!

We arrived in Hermannsburg and unfortunately Hermannsburg did not do anything to improve the mood in the car!!! We went to the supermarket to pick up the key to the caravan park and pay for our night - $10 per person for the night so a dusty spot, ants and a not very clean amenities block!!  There were so many ants around we were unable to sit or eat outside!!  Oh well for one night it wasn’t going to hurt us!!

The children found the fact that we were locked into the caravan park slightly overwhelming with Zac declaring that he didn’t feel very ‘safe” and when questioned by Callum “why not?” he replied “Callum look around we have to keep the gate locked and we are surrounded by a huge fence and barbed wire!!” Pete just kept mumbling under his breathe.  There was one other family group in with us for the night so I had a chat to them, they advised that it did get rather noisy at night time, and that there were lots of dogs in Hermannsburg and they too were noisy at night time!! Apparently there are two dogs to every person – so that makes it a population of about 600 dogs!!!

After setting up I then commenced the task of cleaning the caravan because 200kms of dirt road had caused a huge dust storm inside the van and there was a fine layer of red dust through all the low cupboards!!  It was a huge job that included washing all the pots, utensils and linen from the kids beds and wiping out all the cupboards!!  But a bonus of the park was that the washing machine was free!! Yeah at least something was looking up.  Pete buried himself in the car fixing the bits that had shaken loose; there was nothing we could do to fix the bike rack that now had a serious lean on the back of the caravan that would need to wait for Alice Springs.

Oh and Hermannsburgh is a dry community so it was an offense to bring alcohol into the town and it was an offense to consume alcohol in the caravan park.  So all in all it was a pretty horrendous day and our sorrows could not be washed away over a beer, as we settled in for the night the only consolation for the kids was that we once again had telephone and internet connection so we could call family and friends and catch up on e-mails!!!