Friday 26 June 2009

Honeymoon part XII

The final part of the honeymoon saga.
After spending most of the first day at Uluru it was time to visit the Olgas/Kata Tjuta.
The olgas are a great place and have a reasonably good walk called the valley of the winds which is well worth doing.
From Honeymoon


There were even wild flowers.
From Honeymoon


The rock was also a nice solid conglomerate unlike the flakey stuff on Uluru, would be quite good for climbing although rather unprotectable short of wacking a few good bolts in.
From Honeymoon


Keen tramper.
From Honeymoon


Some valley of the winds scenery.
From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Thursday 18 June 2009

Honeymoon part XI

The saga continues with more photos of Uluru.

These were hard to get as I had a 70-200 lens on a 1.6x body so that I could only fit half of it in from the sunset viewing location.
Luckily I found a good programme on Linux that makes it easy to join it all together.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

After the rain there was a nice sunset.
From Honeymoon

Saturday 13 June 2009

Honeymoon part X

When we finally made it to Uluru it was raining rather heavily which turned out to be a good thind as that way we got to see the waterfalls running down it.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Thursday 11 June 2009

Honeymoon part IX

Even more pictures of things seen around kings canyon and on the way to Uluru.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Desert Oak

From Honeymoon

Black breasted buzzard

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Mt conner

From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part VIII

Even more Kings Canyon since I could not fit it all in the first post.

From Honeymoon

Western bowerbird with bower, seen near the garden of eden on the rim walk.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Spinifex

Honeymoon part VII

Kings canyon was the next destination. It has some great sites but unfortunately like 99% of the outback every second stone is sacred which means the areas that the public are allowed to go are very limited.

From Honeymoon

Crater rim walk.
From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

There were flocks of spinifex pigeons everywhere, quite lovely birds actually.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Honeymoon part VI

From glen helen we decided to drive down to kings canyon in one day which was quite a drive 6-700 kms or so but with a 130 km/hr speed limit it didn't take to long.

The first stop on the way was Henbury meteorite craters which is an imprssively desolate area which would also be a good place to camp.

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Major mitchell's cockatoo, there were six in one tree.

From Honeymoon

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Honeymoon part V

On our final day in the west MacDonnell National Park we visited the ochre pits and ormiston gorge.

Firstly another picture from Glen Helen.

From Honeymoon

If you strain your eyes you can see the brown falcon on top of the tree.

From Honeymoon

Ormiston gorge

From Honeymoon


From Honeymoon

Western bowerbird

Sunday 7 June 2009

Honeymoon part IV

Things around the west macdonell national park.

Paddy Mellon
Paddy melons were quite numerous on the sides of the road as well as in the river beds.

Dingo
Nearly every night we were in glen helen we had dingos visiting. There were also a few of them wandering around the kings canyon resort.

Cricket

Honeymoon part III

After we finished the walk we spent a few more days camping at glen helen and doing day trips out from there. On the first day we went to Ellery creek big hole and Serpentine gorge.

Ellery Creek Big Hole
The Big Hole.

Painted Finch
Serpentine gorge was particularly good for the birds with flocks of zebra and painted finches coming it to drink along with grey headed, brown and white plumed honeyeaters as well as budgies and a western bowerbird.

Budgie

Honeymoon Part II

Once we got to Glen Helen we were due to start the exciting part of the trip. This was a three day walk over sections 11 and 12 of the Larapinta trail. Sadly we did not have time to do all of the trail.

Mt Sonder
Mt Sonder was the first part of the walk and it easily used up the best part of a day although it was well worth it.

Catfish
Catfish that was in redbank gorge.

IMG_1303
The scenery was reasonable on the walk.

Flies
The flies were pretty much a constant feature apart from the few days when it rained.

Top of Mt Sonder
On top of Mt Sonder.

Hilltop Lookout
Campsite on the second night on the walk.