The Mereenie Loop

The cynic in me (never! I hear you say) would observe that whenever you find a good road in an out of the way place, suspect a mining operation. Now, allegedly I paid a $5 permit to travel this road so the custodians can afford to maintain it for the tourists. The road wasn’t bad, by any means, even though we had the choice of corrugations, rough, or rough with corrugations depending on which path you chose in many places. However, there was a marked improvement turning into a hard-rolled mud road when the Santos signs turned up about 80km from the sealed road at Kings Canyon.

Being a long way west now, and with us still wavering between central time and Qld time, the sun takes forever to get up. After I had been staring at the canvas for some time I decided to get out of my tent at the Finke River campground (better known as Palm Valley, even though it is 4km away) and climb the local lookout for sunrise. As it turns out, the sun rises behind a big hill there which takes away the sunrise aspect a little but the surrounding hills light up in dramatic fashion when the sun hits them.

Back at camp all was proceeding well for a trip down to Palm Valley for a quick walk. The view is not that unusual being quite similar to places in the Top End. What is unusual is that these are the only palms for 1000km in any direction. A remnant from a time when the whole continent was a dense rainforest. As the conditions dried out, a series of local environmental factors has allowed the palms here to hang on where all around they have died out.

The more important aspect of the journey, as far as Elliot was concerned, was that it fulfilled his requirement for some real 4wd-ing. Being basically along the riverbed, there were some large boulders, sandy sections and other tricky bits to be negotiated but no dramas really.

On the way out again, we passed by Hermannsberg. An aboriginal town, the “residential” parts have “Private – keep out” at the entrance to a fenced compound with rows of neat, new, probably identical and gawdy-coloured cottages. We were looking, unsuccessfully for a museum and found the historic precinct of the old mission next to the church, but declined the $25 admission charge. There being little else to do, it was back onto the road.

This section of unsealed road was not the worst we’ve been on, but I wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. There being a distinct lack of attractions along it, we elected to head back to Gosse Bluff for lunch. It is in fact an old meteorite crater from a time when the land was 500m above where it stands today. Many of the more familiar craters in the area are only a matter of a few thousand years old and are from smaller impacts. They have that more familiar regular shape. This one was from around 140million years ago, and the geological features give an indication of what happens deep underground when a comet perhaps 1km across hits the land.

As indicated by the map, the Mereenie Loop is in fact devoid of specific points of interest, but does move through varying terrains, often accompanied by a change in the state of the road. We had camels and melons to break the journey up. This time I suspect the melons may have been feral watermelons, because they had that familiar football shape, not round like the local version, and when broken smelled like a watermelon and had seeds like a watermelon, even though the coloured flesh was absent.

Tonight finds us in the Kings Canyon resort. I’m getting similar vibes to El Questro, so I suspect I’ll be in a rush to be out of here in the morning. We have already been in trouble for using the wrong camp kitchen, and have noted that all of the camp kitchens are without hot water. We’ll be avoiding paying $2.30 for their diesel, but may need to extract a loaf of bread from them.

Expecting 1  degree tonight, but not so bad now.