Deviating from the regular tour plan, our guide wanted to give us a little extra treat and first let us watch a spectacular sunrise over the Cobber Pedy hills and together with our incredible photogeneity we had an amazing time at our impromptu photo shoot. The model at the next stop, however, was no longer us but the Breakaways, which were also not on the schedule. We got up extra early for this and surely our breath “broke away” at the sight of this marvellous canyon snd protruding mountains. Australia has quite some gems on offer.
**** This post came to be through a Groovy Grape Tour provided free of charge to cover it in blogs posts. I wasn’t paid.****
I don’t know what happened; blame it on the sun, blame it on the long drive, but suddenly the whole bus was cheering to Helene Fischer, a star of German folk music, and I was slowly dying.
You can imagine how glad I was to get out at the next stop that marked the border between South Australia and Northern Territory and with the time also the sound track changed and our tour guide start chiming in to The Time Warp.
You see, crossing the border meant another change in time zone and therefore a turn of our watch.
After that, we learned more about the Stuart Highway, which we’ve been driving on since Adelaide. We saw the geographical centre of Australia, the Marla Man (which had been carved into the landscape like with cornfields and depicts an aboriginal man throwing a spear) and the aboriginal APY lands, just to name a few.
Along the way we stopped again at roadhouses and one of them had a very uniquely named port wine and it was apparently so good that it was sold out. So the port lovers on board couldn’t have a sip and I unfortunately can’t tell you about it. But don’t worry, curious souls, they even ship abroad.
The actual ride was not very spectacular and the view is not the most captivating. Interesting about the Stuart Highway are its stories and those our guide had plenty of.
I think I need to devote an extra blog posts to its curiosities.
So without the audio commentary of our knowledgeable guide, what did we in fact see? Lots of red sand, low bushes – sometimes more, sometimes very few – randomly placed flat mountains, funny road signs, the longest fence in the world, both dead and alive cattle and wedgetail eagles feeding on the carcasses.
Sadly, like I saw on Kangaroo Island, the Stuart Highway also claims many animals’ lives.
Hours later, we finally made it to the National Park and once we were close the sun had sneakily hidden herself behind a thick cover of rain clouds that were to stick to our heels for the next few days.
The night’s thunderstorm forecast did somewhat dampen our spirits but not our adventurer souls and so we bravely walked up to the sunset viewing platform and watched a great non-existent sunset.
Rolling clouds, sandstorms and a tiny streak of red along the horizon, next to kata Tjuta made for an impressive glimpse of the places we would see up close. But more on that in the next post.
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