So Day 6 arrived and it started with a sprinkle of rain as we left Coober Pedy bound for Ayers Rock - quite amazing really considering they only get 5 inches of rain a year. The area sounding the town is covered in mining sites as in the photo below. Another common site today was the many car wrecks on the side of the road. Seems when they crash and burn they are just left there forever to rust away. No point towing them anywhere i guess!
In some ways the trip was reasonably uneventful, hence the boring landscape cloud shots below. The main drama today was that for 500km as we headed northwest, we had strong crosswinds again. Nowhere near as bad as earlier in the week at Broken Hill but still made for very unpleasant conditions, constantly fighting to keep the bike upright and on the road, so much so that it was difficult to even maintain the 110km/h speed limit at times.
An example of the fuel prices in the outback...further up the road we paid 212.0 for premium unleaded.
The obligatory shot of the straight road ahead....
The SA/NT border crossing although couldn't stop for long as you can see in the next photo below the best way to keep the flies off your face is to leave your helmet on..which is a little warm when standing still in 35 degree heat..yep that's right ..35 degrees which is a bit hotter than the 13 degree midday maximums from only a couple of days ago.
Northern Territory also means 130km/h speed limits although with the cross winds was next to impossible to achieve, until we turned left at Erlmunda for the last 250km stretch westward to the Rock. Heading direct into the wind was less of an issue so we made bit better time.
Although had to watch out for slowing moving traffic...Commodore full of "locals"...have a close look at the front right tyre (or what's left of it)....doesn't seem to bother 'em, just keep driving apparently!
Late in the day, finally made it to the entrance to the National Park so we could pay the fees and have our first close up look at the rock.
Yep...it is definitely a very big rock...and another very big tick on the bucket list! Has taken 50 years (almost) but finally made it here!
Now the very big question .... can we climb it and make it to the top? Not so sure yet as there doesn't seem to be a pub at the top, so am really doubtful about the need to climb.
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