Northern Territory Day 4

The morning of the fourth day, I checked out of Yulara, and headed towards Kings Canyon. I stopped briefly on the roadside, to look at Mount Connor in the distance. Mount Connor is located on private land, so the only way to look at it up close is with the camel tours run by the owners. I decided to skip the camel tour and make do with a distant view.

I drove on to Kings Canyon Resort (about 400 km from Yulara by sealed road, and about 7 km past Watarrka National Park, which contains Kings canyon), and checked in. I then grabbed some lunch from the local milk bar, and headed back to Kings canyon.

I decided to do the Canyon Rim walk that afternoon, and started out from the carpark.

This is a view of the canyon from the trail from the carpark.

This is the initial steps up to the canyon rim. If you look closely, you can see the line of people making their way up.

Because I have an injured knee, I used a walking stick to take some of my weight, and made my way up the steps very slowly and carefully. I followed this principal for the whole walk, and only needed to stop once to put an ice pack on my knee. I highly recommend the use of a walking stick as a cheap hiking pole, it made a real difference to how secure I was when scrambling across uneven footing.

The top of the canyon rim is covered with mounds of stones, almost like giant beehives. These mounds used to be sand dunes, millions of years ago, but have been compressed over time into rock.

Some of the rocks show wavy lines, from being at the base of a water way.

One section of the canyon rim contains a "miniature" version of the landscape, called Liliput.

At the back of the canyon, the path descends down stairs, into an oasis called the Garden of Eden. Permanent rock pools here are filled with water that sinks through the sandstone, then hits a layer of waterproof shale.

The path then continues back up to the other side of the canyon rim. There are some amazing views from here of the canyon.
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Finally, the path heads back down to the carpark. The descent is not as steep as the ascent.


All up the walk took me about 4 hours. The guide books list the walk as taking between 3 and 4 hours, so they are pretty spot on. The walk is often a scramble over rough ground, and it is sometimes hard to spot the next route marker, even in broad daylight. I wouldn't want to be on the walk after dark.

It was an exhausting walk, but also beautiful and amazing. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Update on DIY projects

I haven't posted for a while, and several projects have continued. I have been painting the side of the house. Two of the window frames had sections with putty that had not been over painted by the previous owners, and hence there was rust starting on the frames. I cleaned out the old putty (not too hard in this case,as the putty was still fairly soft), sanded back the frames, painted with metal primer, and then with two coats of solargard. Finally, I applied fresh putty. This was about a week and a half ago. The instructions on the putty say to wait two weeks for the putty to skin before over painting, so I can finish painting the window frames next weekend.

I had a couple of cubic meters of pine bark mulch delivered, and I have mulched the new garden bed. I also weeded the back garden bed (along the back fence line) and dug up the sleepers edging it. I have moved the sleepers out by about half a meter, to widen the garden bed. Previously, the edge was hard up against the trees and shrubs, which made mowing difficult, and didn't look too good. I am gradually mulching the bed, as time and energy levels permit :)

While cleaning up the back garden bed, I decided to severely cut back a plant that was looking pretty ratty. When I got to the roots, a cluster of rhizomes, I discovered that the plant is a form of ginger ( the rhizomes smell gingery when I cut into them). I left some of the fresh shoots alone, and gave the plant a good watering with seasol, so now I will wait to see if it comes back strongly or not.

The plants I initially planted into the new garden bed have all survived, except for one of the platylobium seedlings. It was pulled out either by a cat or a bird. I went back to the native nursery to get more tube stock, and planted some more shrubs and ground covers. I am not sure what the new plants are, as the labels at the nursery were all worn off, so I went by section (ground cover, small shrub). If they survive and start flowering then I will be able to tell what they are then :).

Over the last few days, I have been finishing the tiling preparation in the bathroom. I finally spent the time with a cold chisel and hammer, to remove the last of the old tiling cement. I then washed down the wall with sugar soap, rinsed thoroughly, and let the wall dry. This morning I put a line of silicone sealant down where the wall meets the top of the bath. Once this has cured, I will have a go at putting fresh tile cement on, and re-tiling the first section.

Now, back to cleaning the house ... :)

Northern Territory Day 3

The third day of my trip, I visited Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). A number of friends had recommended it as being as good as, or better than, Ularu. I didn't feel that it was better than Ularu, but I agree that it was just as good, but a completely different experience.

I started out in the morning with the Valley of the Winds walk. The walk starts as a single section of track heading in between the rock mounds of Kata Tjuta, until you reach the first lookout. From here there is an amazing view of the Valley of the winds.

After the first lookout the walk becomes a loop walk, down into the floor of the valley, through a steep section between two mounds, to the second lookout, then back down and around to the valley floor, then back up to the first lookout. The path is rocky, uneven footing, and often quite steep, but I still found it easer to walk on than the sand of the Ularu basewalk. I had a walking stick with me, which was invaluable both for reducing the stress on my bad knee, and for helping me to keep my balance in some of the trickier parts.

The valley floor was probably the easiest part of the walk, until the steep scramble up to the second lookout.

The view from the second lookout was the highlight of the whole walk.

And here is a view from the track, looking back up to the second lookout. There are some other walkers, coming down the track.

The continuation of the loop walk after the second lookout gave me some great views of the some of the other mounds of Kata Tjuta.

Finally, the loop section of the walk was finished, and I returned up to the first lookout, then down to the carpark. Then it was time to eat lunch, and put an ice pack on my knee and ankle. After lunch, I did the much shorter and easier Wulpa Gorge walk, through another area of Kata Tjuta. As this walk was much easier, it was also a lot more crowded, with a lot of tour groups. Wulpa gorge is greener than the Valley of the Winds walk, with relatively more dense vegitation.

After all of this I drove back to Yulara and collapsed for a while!

Ballarat/New garden bed

Well, it has been a busy weekend. Yesterday (Saturday), I drove up to Ballarat to visit friends. It was wonderful spring weather, a bit windy, but otherwise warm and sunny. We ate lunch at a restaurant on the shore of Lake Wendouree (which has water in it again!), and then just hung around chatting. Eventually we watched the sunset over the lake, before heading our separate ways. I was a lovely day.

Today, I planted plants into my new garden bed. I have been working on the garden bed gradually for months, starting with using a mattock to dig trenches to lay sleepers in, then laying down cardboard to kill the grass, then filling the bed with soil. Finally the bed was ready for planting. One of my friends in Ballarat (one of the people I had lunch with yesterday) had sent me a list of plants that are indigenous to the area I live in, and this morning I visited a native nursery that stocks some of them. The nursery is a not-for-profit organisation called Greenlink, which relies on volunteers to grow indigenous plants in tube stock. The goal is to make sure that the species that are local to the area continue to be grown in the area.

I was lucky enough to find three of the plants on my list in stock, and another type that one of the volunteers told me is definitely indigenous to my area, and one that they are trying to push people to plant. So I got 2 of each type, for a total of 8 plants. The varieties are:

Epacris Impressa (common heath)

Platylobium obtusangulum (Common flat pea)

Dianella admixta/revoluta (Black Anther Flax Lily)

Anthropodium strictum (Chocolate lily)

I planted out the tube stock, except for the platylobium, which the nursery volunteer told me was a bit small to plant yet, he recommended that I keep it in the tube for a couple of weeks before planting. I have put the tubes in the location I intend to plant them, and if they survive the next couple of weeks then I will plant them in. I also put some clear plastic tubing around the plants, to give them some protection for the first week or so.

And now, I wait. Hopefully some of them will survive, and maybe all of them will. Time will tell :)

NT Trip Day 2

Well, I'm stuck at home sick today, with the nasty cough that is doing the rounds, so I thought I might as well get back into blogging about my trip.

On the second day, I drove down to Uluru, and joined a Ranger guided tour along the Mala Walk (the first section of the Uluru basewalk). The walk included discussions of some rock paintings. The paintings are very faint these days. The ranger said that during the early days of Uluru tourism, guides used to throw water over the paintings, to make them stand out more clearly. Sadly, this has washed away a lot of the paint. The ranger also told us about the geology of the rock.

Warning: my non-expert interpretation follows: Uluru is made up of a "conglomerate" of different types of rock. A long time ago, there was an inland sea in the centre of the landmass, and different types of rock were washed down by rivers. The rock settled in locations where it became compacted. Once the sea drained, the surface was gradually worn away. Three large sections were left raised. These are now Uluru, Kata Tjuta and Mount Connor. At some point an earthquake was involved, which tilted Uluru to an angle. Hence the lines of sediment are no longer horizontal.

Up close, Uluru is very irregular, with obvious color changes in different sections, particularly in the areas where depressions have been worn into the rock. Overall there is an orange coating over the whole rock, which is apparently rust.

The Mala walk splits off from the base walk towards the end, and heads in closer to the rock for a view of an area where a waterfall from the top of the rock (only active when there is rain) feeds a waterhole. The waterhole is the second most reliable source of water at Uluru, but is currently dry.

After viewing the waterhole, we returned along the Mala walk to the carpark. I stopped by the cultural centre to have lunch. I then drove back to Uluru to do the base walk (9.4 km accoding to the maps). The first part of the base walk involved retracing my steps along the Mala walk, to the point where the trail splits off. This time I continued around the base of Uluru.

What can I say about the base walk? It was exhausting. The surface of the track was sand, varying from soft packed to hard packed. The soft packed sections were very hard to walk on. It was beautiful. The different views of the rock from different angles were fascinating. The color of the soil (orange) against Uluru (dark orange) against the vegetation (gray green) against the sky (deep blue) made for an amazing color palette. I had always seen paintings of Uluru and wondered if the colors were exaggerated. They aren't. If anything, the colors in real life are even more vivid.

The rock looks very different from different angles. In some places it is very serene, in others almost threatening. The surrounding terrain is very flat, with low lying vegetation. Closer to the rock there are taller trees, and in a few places the vegetation is almost lush.

The air temperature was in the mid teens, which was perfect for the walk. The sun was fierce, and I was very glad of my sunscreen, long sleeves and hat. I had water and trail mix with me, and I was glad of both. Along the trail I was mostly by myself, although every now and then I passed another walker, or was passed by someone else. There were enough people to make me feel confident that if I got into trouble someone would find me and go for help, but few enough not to interfere with my enjoyment of Uluru. I was very glad not to be walking in summer.

The round trip took me about three and a half hours (including several stops to rest). I was exhausted by the end of it, but very satisfied. I headed back to the resort for dinner, and then fell into bed.

NT Trip Day 1

The first day of the trip was the Friday. I flew into Ayers Rock Airport about midday, and picked up the hire car. The car was a Toyota Camry Altise automatic, and very nice to drive.

I drove to Yulara (aka the Ayers Rock Resort) and checked in. By then it was early afternoon, and I drove down to the National Park to see the Rock. I bought my 3 day park ticket, then drove to the Cultural Centre, which has a number of displays about the traditional owners, the Anangu, and their religious beliefs about Ularu (aka Ayers rock). There are signs up requesting that no photos be taken in the Cultural Centre, so no photos of this section.

I then followed the Liru walk, from the Cultural Centre to the base of Ularu.

This is a photo from the Liru walk, looking away from ularu. One thing that I was really struck by the whole time that I was in the Red Centre, was the colors. The ground was often a very intense orangy red, and the sky was a very intense blue.

By then it was getting late, so I walked back to the Cultural Centre, then drove to the Sunset Viewing area to watch the sunset.

The rock started out as a pale orange color, then became an amazing golden colour, then a deep firey red, before fading to brown, as the sunset progressed. I have photos, but they don't do it justice. The Anangu have requested that photos of the rock not be published without a permit, so I won't be posting any in my blog.

Northern Territory

I've just returned from a trip to the Northern Territory.

Last time I travelled, to Tasmania, I did a lot of very detailed posts, and I reallise now that I never did wind up blogging about the final days of the trip. So this time I will start with a brief overview, then follow with more details.

Day 1 (Friday): Fly to Ayers Rock Airport. Pick up hire car and drive to Yulara. Check in to Lost camel Hotel. Drive to Ularu. Stop at the cultural centre and look at displays. Follow Liru walk from cultural centre to Ularu, and back. Drive to sunset viewing car park and watch sunset over Ularu.

Day 2 (Saturday). Drive to Ularu from Yulara. Join ranger guided walk on Mala walk. Stop lunch. Ularu base walk.

Day 3 (Sunday). Drive to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). Follow Valley of the Winds walk (full loop). Follow Walpa Gulley walk. Return to Yulara.

Day 4 (Monday). Drive from Yulara to Kings Canyon Resort. Check in. Drive to Kings Canyon and follow Canyon Rim Walk. Return to Kings Canyon Resort.

Day 5 (Tuesday). Drive to Kings Canyon and follow Creek walk. Drive to Kathleen springs walk and follow walking track to spring. Drive to Alice Springs. Check into Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge.

Day 6 (Wednesday). Morning - Wash clothes. Midday. Lunch in Todd Mall. Afternoon. Alice Springs Desert Park.

Day 7 (Thursday). Drive to Glen Helen Gorge and walk to Gorge. Attend Ranger talk about animal signs (tracks and droppings). Drive to Ormiston Gorge and walk to waterhole. Drive to Ochre Pits and walk to pits. Drive back to Alice Springs.

Day 8 (Friday). Drive to Simpsons Gap and follow Ghost gum walk, then Cassia Hill Walk. Continue on to Gap, and walk to Gap. Drive to Standley Chasm. Follow walking path to first Chasm. Return to Alice Springs. Visit Reptile Centre. Get to hold snake and several lizards.

Day 9 (Saturday). Drive to Telegraph Station reserve in Alice Springs and visit original site of Alice Springs. Drive to airport and take plane back to Melbourne.

It was a great trip, but I am glad to be home :).

Duct repair

Since the start of the cold weather, i have been using the ducted heating, but finding it sadly ineffectual. I suspected there was something wrong with the ducts (a suspicion supported by family and friends who told me that the heater should be working better), but I hadn't geared myself up to crawl under the house to have a look.

This afternoon I finally got myself organised. After gearing up with tough jeans, shoes, long sleeved top, heavy work gloves, dust mask and torch, I crawled under my house to see what was happening. Sure enough, there was a problem. One of the ducts leading to the far corner of the house had pulled loose from the joiner, so the warm air was all flooding out to heat the underfloor space. Two rolls of duct tape later (plus some rope to hold the duct off the ground a bit, the old support had broken), and the duct was rejoined.

I am also a bit amazed by the sheer amount of rubbish people have dumped under the house over the years, although given how much broken glass and bottle caps I keep pulling out of the garden, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

2 rolls of duct tape: $5.
Heavy duty torch: $5.
Savings on wasted heat over winter: $100s.
Finishing a dirty unpleasant job I had been putting off: PRICELESS.

I have spent a fair while over the last few months painting the back of the house. Here are some progress shots. On one day the air temperature was OK for painting, but the sun was fierce, and was heating up the window frames and walls too much. So I pegged drop sheets to the guttering to act as sun screens. It worked very well.


And here is the final view. I won't try to paint the section covered by the awning at this stage, it is just too difficult. When I get rid of the sleep out that holds up the other side of the awning, it will need to be taken down, so I will paint that wall and gutter section then.

How my garden grows...

This is the raised garden bed I put in about six months ago.

And here it is now!

The wooden edging has weathered a bit, but the plants have really taken off.

Productive weekend

I have just had an exhausting but productive weekend. I have just finished painting half of the eaves on the north side of the house. The remaining section is hard to reach and I will leave it to later. This weekend's effort involved about 6 hours of climbing up and down an extention ladder to sand, wash, and apply 2 coats of paint. My arms and legs hate me, but it feels good to have the job done.

Also this weekend I finally got around to removing hardened putty from the base of a window frame and replacing it with fresh putty. I applied another lot of woody weed killer to the privet stump which had started sprouting again, and mixed up a batch of glyphosate to poison back the kikuyu in few places where I can't mow and it is getting out of control.

House Stuff

Hmm. I haven't really blogged a lot lately, I just haven't been in the mood. I have been doing a bit around the house.

Over the last month or so I have:

• Painted another window frame and section of wall.
• Put the benchtop dishwasher onto a bench sitting over the washing machine, instead of sitting it directly onto the washing machine.
• Painted the toilet (or rather the room the toilet is in!) and installed a mirror over the hand basin.
• Had the house rewired.
• Steam cleaned the carpets (myself, using one of those hire cleaner's from the supermarket)
• Made a start on a new garden bed.

Not bad for a couple of months!

Yesterday removed a cracked pane glass from a window and removed the surrounding putty, then painted the frame with metal primer. This is the second window I have replaced the glass in, and before starting I spent some time looking on the net for a better way to get the putty out. Last time I used a hammer and chisel, which worked but was very hard and made a lot of noise (my poor neighbors!). I found a number of suggestions including:

• Paint over the putty with linseed oil. Let the linseed oil soak in, to soften the putty again.
• Use parafin oil to soften the putty.
• Use paint stripper to soften the putty.
• Use oven cleaner on the putty to soften it.
• Use a heat gun to soften the putty.

Well, I have been using paint stripper to remove the paint from the window frame, and while it had a noticable affect on fresh putty, it didn't seem to make much difference to the old, hardened putty. So I thought I would give the rest of the suggestions a try, starting with the easiest and least dangerous, the linseed oil.

I put the linseed oil onto the putty, and waited a couple of hours to see what happened. The top layer softened a little bit, but it was not a significant improvement.

Then I tried the new heat gun that I had picked up from Aldi a few weeks ago. This worked amazingly well! The affect on the oldest and hardest putty was less than on the softer putty, but it still made a noticable difference. By using the heat gun, I was able to get the putty off using a putty knife. It was still a lot of work, but compared to the hammer and chisel it worked like a charm. I can't remember where I found the recommendation, or I would post a link, but to anyone who has made this suggestion on a web forum, thank you!

Today I installed the new pane of glass. This was a much larger pane of glass than the first one I had replaced, and getting it up the ladder without dropping it was a bit of a challenge, but I got there. I had a bit of trouble getting the glass into the frame, as it turns out the window frame has warped slightly and is a bit out of true. So the glass fit, but is pressed firmly against the edge of the frame on the top left and bottom right corners. This is probably what cracked the first pane of glass, so hopefully I will not be repeating this job in a month or so. Fingers crossed.

Nice neighbors

Monday night was bin night. I was sick and a bit out of it, and I must have put the wrong bin out (we alternate between green waste and recyclables). The next morning I was on my way to the doctors when I noticed that everyone else had the green waste bin out, not the recycleable bin. Oh well, I thought, I'm feeling too sick to care. When I got home a couple of hours later, after picking up my antibiotics (turns out I have a sinus infection), one of my neighbors had swapped over my bins for me. It was a very nice thing to do, and really improved my mood.

Happily, the antibiotics are working fast, and I will be back at work tomorrow.

Silky Oak trees

Over the last week or so, some trees in my garden have started to produce lots of orangy yellow comb like flowers. They look pretty spectacular and I was curious about what type of tree they are. Well thanks to the magic of google, the search string "tree yellow comb like flowers" eventually lead me to pictures of the same variety of tree. They are silky oak trees (grevillea robusta). I have four of them, two along the front fence line and two along the back fence line.

Here is a shot of one of them in the front garden:

One of the sites I found says that these trees can grow to 35 meters in the wild, but usually only get to about 14 meters in suburbia. I sincerely hope these ones keep to the lower estimate, 35 meters is a bit high for a tree in a backyard!

Trip to Ballarat

Last Friday I drove to Ballarat, to visit N and S and their new baby T. S had just started back at work, so N and I went to lunch in Ballarat, with T in his pram. T was just two weeks old, and very gorgeous, and very small! He is big for a two week old though.

It was great catching up, and N is recovering well from the C-section and seems to be coping very well with young T.

When S got home from work, we ordered Indian take away and caught up a bit over dinner. After dinner I had a ticket for the "Blood on the Southern Cross" light and sound show at Sovereign Hill, so I said my goodbyes and headed off.

The show was fun, and the special effects were often very impressive. I now have a much better understanding of the Eureka Stockade and the effect on Australian history, so that was worth while. Then I drove back to Melbourne and collapsed into bed. Good day.

Otways day trip

On Tuesday, I decided to go on a day trip to the Otways. The drive down (via Colac) took about 3 hours all up, including a couple of short breaks.

Otway Fly
My first stop was the Otway Fly . The Fly is a raised path, which takes you from ground level to treetop height and back. To reach the fly, you walk from the ticket office, down about a half kilometer track to the entrance to the fly.

Here is a view of the walkway construction, looking down through the walkway.

The walkway curves around. Halfway along, at the highest point, is a tower. There is a very narrow spiral staircase to the top of the tower. The views from the top are pretty spectacular.

Looking down from the tower, here is a view of the cantilever section (left) and the continuation of the walkway (right).


After finishing the Fly walk, the path takes you back to the ticket office. On the way back, I saw a black snail on the path. Apparently this species is only found in the Otways, and is carnivorous, eating small insects.

I really enjoyed the Otway fly, it was worth the trip.

Triplet Falls

After finishing up at the fly, I decided to head on to the Triplet Falls walk, which is near by. The walking track has been upgraded recently and is in good condition, but involves a LOT of stairs. I was a bit daunted on the way down (worrying about the walk back up!) but the view of the waterfalls was well worth it.

The waterfalls have three viewing platforms. Here is a view from the lowest, where the falls are reducing to cascades.

Up the track (and more stairs), a short distance is the mid level viewing platform. This is probably the best view of the falls. The main section of waterfall has a forrested section in the middle, creating two main streams of water.

Finally, the uppermost platform gives a view down to the falls through the trees. I don't have any good photos of this, as the camera kept focusing on the trees.

The path back crosses over one of the streams feeding the falls.

When I came around a corner and saw this walkway, my first thought was "wow, that's quite artistic!". Then I realised that I was looking at a section of the walkway that a tree had fallen on. The chopped up remains of the tree trunk are next to the walkway.

Further up, there was an old abandoned steam engine, with it's load of wood left near by.


Once I made it back to the carpark it was getting late, and my ankles were a bit sore after all the stairs. So I decided to head back to Colac, then do the "Red Rock" scenic drive. To be honest, I suspect the "loop" of the drive was drawn on the tourist map by someone in Melbourne, who has never been there, and wanted something else to add to the map. The roads were very narrow and poorly maintained. However the drive to the Red Rock lookout was worth while. These are two views from the lookout. On the left is a view of the countryside, showing the volcanic nature of the scenery. On the right is a view of Lake Corrangamite. The sun was breaking through the clouds over the lake, which is why the foreground looks so dark.

After this, I drove north to Cressey, and then home. All in all a worthwhile trip.