(photos: Gosse Bluff Crater, Finke River)
At 6:45 we met and drove a short ways to where the Finke River crosses the highway and walked in along the sandy wash to some pools and saw Hardhead Ducks,
Eurasian Coot, and Purple Swamp-hen. We returned to Glen Helen and bought a fabulous veggie frittata and filter coffee for breakfast and then checked out and said goodbye to the very nice owner and staff.
The road west immediately turns into gravel/sand/washboard for 261 km that makes for a long, noisy day. Half way along we stopped to explore Gosse Bluff, the remains of the crater formed when a comet crashed into the area 140 million years ago. The 5 km-wide red crater walls rise from the surrounding plain and are a pleasant place to picnic and bird watch. Hilary picked up a Splendid Fairywren.
The stressful drive required that you had to really hold onto the steering wheel to get through the worse of the washboards so we all took turns creating dense rooster tails. Fortunately the scenery was quite lovely with valleys of Spinifex grass dotted with Desert Oak, a graceful tree that looks somewhat like a pine but belongs to the Casuarina family with drooping “needle” branchlets. We also drove through areas full of Grass Trees and yellow, white and purple flowers. Amazingly we saw no houses, fences or any signs of civilization other than an occasional vehicle during the entire trip. Quite wonderful to be that far off the grid.
We arrived at Watarrka National Park (Kings Canyon) at three and settled into the Kings Cyn Lodge, a Voyages resort. This is our fourth Voyages resort in the three trips we’ve taken to Oz and they all are similar in that the rooms are attractive, the hotel blends pretty well into the scenery and they have an outrageously expensive restaurant and a reasonable one that is usually crammed. Hilary and I walked around the Lodge trail and id’ed a few birds and then we all went to the open-air restaurant for pizza and beer and were entertained by a great old guy on guitar.
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