Matt Down Under

We left earlier than the days before, we were facing a long drive from Coober Pedy to Uluru. I got up right in time for a spectacular sunrise.

After leaving town, we stopped a couple of times to take photos. The landscape around Coober Pedy is full of small hills. Mining machines were digging lots of holes into the ground — probably some kind of test-digging to see if there’s opal to be found — and the excavated soil creates the hills that can be seen everywhere. It’s a weird look.

We also noticed quite a few cars at the side of the road that looked like they had been dumped there and burnt.

After we passed Marla I noticed the landscape changed. Grass became more dry now, not as green as it had been before. Again we did quite a few stops to document interesting scenery, such as flooded plains next to the highway.

One of the most important things to consider when driving into the outback is the location of petrol stations. Often there can be 200km or more between stations. We didn’t really know the fuel capacity and average consumption of our rental car, so we tried to calculate it based on how much we re-fuelled. We calculated we could easily skip Marla and drive until Kulgera. Huge mistake.

It turned out the fuel indicator in our car was very unreliable. When it was on ‘half-empty’, it was actually about three fifths empty. The result was that we just so made it to Kulgera on the last litre of fuel in our tank. The red warning LED had been on for the last 80km or so and I was driving only about 70kph on the last few kilometres to keep the rpm down. Not something I want to experience again. Always use every single petrol station to fill up unless you really know your car’s consumption.

Just before Kulgera, we crossed the border to the Northern Territory. That means I’ve now visited four states or territories in Australia. Still four left to go.

Leaving the Stuart Highway and driving towards Uluru was great. Long roads again and often the grass at the side of the road was quite high so it felt almost like driving through a tunnel. The sun was setting and the landscape was shining in beautiful colours. There were very interesting trees filling the landscape, I think these were cycads.

For a moment we thought we would see Uluru at the horizon, but it turned out to be Mt Connor — I wonder how many people get fooled by that. Probably a lot.

We stopped at Curtin Springs hoping to get some groceries before driving down to Uluru (at that time we had no idea there was a huge holiday resort with supermarket near Uluru). We paid $4 for half a litre of milk — ridiculous.

Further down the road to Uluru we drove past a burning bushfire, we could see the flames, it was right next to the road. I wonder if that was an intentional or a natural bushfire.

We were also driving past some people doing an ‘ultra marathon’ that apparently went for 500km and was about to end at Uluru the following day. We spoke to some of the guys as we passed them with the car, amazing people, I really admire them. They looked so lean and fit and well-tanned.

We found out the only place to camp near Uluru was Yulara, the Ayers Rock Resort. It turned out to be a full holiday resort with hotels, bars, campgrounds, supermarket and space for probably thousands of people. We couldn’t believe our eyes. We felt like driving 700km through the desert and then arriving in Dubai. It was just unbelievable what they had built there, who needs all this luxury? It kept me thinking all night, the commercialisation at Uluru seemed totally over the top.

We booked a powered campsite for two nights and managed to get the second-last available one (in May!). We cooked dinner and decided to get up early to watch the sunrise at Uluru.