Yulara to King’s Creek Station 8-6-13

Packed the tent and had a pleasant drive to King’s Creek Station where we have decided to use as our base for King’s Canyon. King’s Creek Station is about 35 klm from King’s Canyon and began as a camel catching business.   They have Camel rides and quad bike rides in addition to helicopter rides and camping/accommodation.

The sun broke through in a few places today which was very nice to see, hope it’s a promise of things to come.  Took a couple more photos of Mt Conner, hoping that they will look different to the original ones we took.

We got here about 1:00, put up the tent, had lunch and went to investigate the options for a helicopter ride.  Most people we meet seem to think that I will not be able to do the rim walk at the Canyon so we were looking at the option to fly over Kings Canyon $275 each for 35 mins.  On chatting to the pilot he suggested the $310 trip, 45 mins.  We asked him if he gave seniors discounts (doesn’t happen if you don’t ask).  He said if we took the $460 (each trip) he could do it for $368 (each) for a 55 minute trip.  Sorry boys we are spending your inheritance – hehe.  We decided to take this one since we will probably never be here or do it again.

The station has  a policy to give their staff a helicopter ride at some stage and since we were 2 and the copter takes 3, we had Ngami with us.  She is a cook here and has waited 2 months for her ride.  It was fantastic!  The country that you never see is amazing, much of it unexplored.  Canyon upon canyon, valleys and craters (from erosion), thousands of dried up water runs looking like veins running across the sand.  We saw horses, wild cattle and camels.  The erosion is incredible, cracks and gullies run everywhere.

There is a badly damaged new van parked over near the camel run, it appears that the driver hit a fast running horse, he was unhurt luckily, but it shows how careful you have to be.  No driving flat out with eyes only on the road.  We don't know about the horse.

We are the only tent on our patch of grass and it is much quieter here than at the Yulara resort, however we need to  be on the lookout for a wandering calf that attacked our tent while we were on our helicopter ride.  We came back to find the ‘veranda’ tent pole lying on the ground and the pole likewise.  At first we thought that the wind had caught the tent and pulled it out, but a caravanned came across and told us about the calf, he said it went wild.  Michael chased it off again later.

We took many photos on our ride, but the windows of the copter were ‘milky’ so they are not as sharp as they could be.  Sigh.