29 June, 2016
Having reached Uluru, we were now a party of five vehicles and we left a crowded Yulara, stopping before we left the sealed road at the Kata Tjuta lookout. Uluru was just a blue speck on the horizon.
The road was very muddy in parts and occasionally was completely covered in water, so we drove on the high edge of the road where others had blazed a track.
Lasseter’s Cave was our stop for a cuppa. It was hard to believe Lasseter perished near here for lack of water for now and we crossed many streams with water over the wheels and the river below his cave was flowing well over its sandy bottom.
The Hope Range we passed through was rocky and was in sharp contrast to the red sand dunes we drove over for most of the day. Nothing in this landscape was as I expected, with great swathes of green pasture covering most of the roadsides and dunes.
We drove along the Great Central Road as far as Docker River where we paused at the local store for fuel ($2.20/L). Locals mingled around the store and sat outside in cars and a number of dogs lay scratching in the dust. We bought a small wooden trinket from a woman who immediately sat into the passenger seat of a very beaten up blue station wagon which was driven the forty metres across the road to the shop. Fireworks went on sale today for Northern Territory Day and so many were heard around the hills near our desert oak campsite to the west of town that night.
