A six o’clock wake-up call, breakfast and packed and waiting for the bus we discovered that the other two girls in the room were also on our tour. Right on time the bus showed at five to seven, then several minutes of confusion because there were meant to be five of us and there were only four — the girls had been travelling with a friend, and all three were booked on the tour, but one had cancelled and gone home to the UK. They’d called the Wayward office and let them know, but obviously the information hadn’t made it back to Sandy, the bus driver.

Back around town to Toddies Place so we could all register for the tour, confusion once again over the missing girl. The whole story was explained again as the two remaining English girls registered. Jo and I were next, then followed them outside where one of their mobile phones immediately rang — it was the Wayward head office, trying to locate the missing girl! The staff inside were calling the head office, who were then calling back to her friends standing 3m away to check the story! A bizarre situation as once again the story was repeated, with the Wayward head office having no recollection of the cancellation yesterday! Eventually it was sorted out and all sixteen people got on the bus and ready to go.

A quick stop at the side of the road to pick up the National Parks entry tickets from someone who had raced off to collect these when the office opened — these were meant to be available at Toddies Place, but somebody had forgotten to arrange for them yesterday.

Out through Heavitree Gap and south down the Stuart highway, we were meant to visit Rainbow Canyon, but the last few nights’ rain had flooded the road — yesterday one of the buses was stuck for three hours. Instead the first stop was at Stuart’s Well, approximately 90km from Alice. Here we met Jim Cotterill, a member of the family that first recognised Kings Canyon as a potential tourist destination and started developing it in 1960. We also met Stuart’s Wells most famous resident — Dinky the singing dingo.

Since all the other members of the party except Jo had brought their cameras inside, she was “volunteered” to play the piano while Dinky sang. You don’t even have to play well, as soon as the keys are pressed, the dingo howls. Play a high note, and the dingo howls high, play a low note and the dingo howls slightly lower. An odd display!

Time to wander around the roadhouse after the show and read the history from the walls’ full of brochures and magazine articles, cut out and pasted up over the years. Outside in the campground were camels and kangaroos, and an entrepreneurial wildlife rescue service charging five dollars to step into the enclosure and hear about the joeys raised after their mothers became road-kill. Then it was time to get back on the bus for more travelling.

The lunch stop was at Mt Ebeneezer roadhouse, a combination roadhouse and aboriginal gallery, painting and souvenirs on display, including wood-carvings in a style that has been “invented in the last twenty years, and didgeridoos that aren’t made within a thousand kilometres of the inland area — but they are what the tourists expect! While we were eating two long-distance touring cyclists arrived, tired and dusty and looking for a break. I’m not sure where they were from or where they were going, I’ve been at the other end of this, and I didn’t want to interrupt their break with a lot of pointless sounding questions from “a lazy tourist in a bus” . Hats off to them, but I don’t think I could do a self-contained tour here myself — the distances are just too intimidating, a week between Alice and Uluru, over a hundred kilometres between road-houses, definitely a test of moral and physical stamina.

Later in the afternoon we stopped in the bush to walk around in the red earth and to hunt for witchety grubs. Not interested, so Jo and I wandered around in the quiet and looked at the rubbish — here a rusting tin that could be two years old, or it could be fifty, I couldn’t tell! The ubiquitous supermarket plastic bag can be seen caught around tree branches near the road, along with blown out tyres and broken glass, ten metres off into the mulga and it could be any decade, only a few rusting pieces of metal giving any hint that people have been here previously.

A second stop later disturbed a little. I’m sure that there are endless mulga trees around, but our instructions to bash down dead trees and gather up wood for the fire tonight seemed vandalistic. It happened a few times during the week, a tension between the promotion of the outback and the unspoilt nature, and an injunction to “rip that down,” “burn this,” probably the quintessential Australian approach — admiring the landscape while digging up and chopping down as much of it as possible. Regardless, we drove off with the roof of the trailer piled high with dead stumps, no more a shelter for lizards, snakes, birds or possums, fuel for the evening’s fire. Perhaps the ratio of trees to people out here is enough to support the behaviour, perhaps in a few years there’ll be dust-bowl for a few hundred metres either side of the road…

Later in the afternoon we arrived at Kings Creek station, a combination working cattle station, campground, roadhouse and tourist park. A surprisingly noisy place, the electricity is supplied by a large diesel generator, and major attractions are the helicopter rides and quad-biking around in the desert! Jo and I opted for a quarter of an hour camel ride, led by Gwen the camel lady — someone I’m sure I’ve seen at country shows in NSW or Victoria! Only a few hundred metres off into the scrub and it became almost silent, just the creak of the leather harness, the rumbling in the camels’ stomachs,and the swish as they rubbed themselves against the vegetation — a rather disconcerting practice! For some reason I like camels, its almost got to be a joke at home with me suggesting we get one for the garden, but I could find the lazy swaying walk quite relaxing. Too soon we were turning around and heading back, back to the noise and the people.

…

After dinner we mostly congregated around the fire where Sandy had us all play a silly — but fairly effective — name game to try and learn each others names. “Hi I’m Sandy and I like sausages…” , “Hi Sandy who likes sausages, I’m Ken and I like koalas….” “Hi Sandy who likes sausages and Ken who likes koalas, I’m Kota who likes kangaroos….” By the time it gets to the sixteenth person naming the preceding fifteen, everyone should have the general idea!

Although we were camping well out in the bush away from city lights, the clouds covered too much of the sky — none of those spectacular desert skies for us tonight! Dave and a couple of the English girls wanted to see the Southern Cross, amusingly it was low on the horizon and hidden below the trees, we had to point in the rough direction and say “It’d be there if the trees weren’t there!” Finally to bed, no tents, wrapped only in our swags, and hoping for fine weather!

Where?

• Alice Springs (23° 41’ 60"S, 133° 52’ 60"E)
• Stuarts Well
• Kings Creek station