Leaving the fenced off, CCTV covered communities of Alice Springs, I begin to clock up long desert kilometres along the Stuart Highway towards Australia’s most famous icon. About 140 km south of Alice, the Earnest Giles Road heads off to the west of the the sealed highway.
Eleven kilometres west of the Stuart Highway, a gravel track leads 5km off Ernest Giles Road to a cluster of twelve small craters, known as the Henbury Meteorite Craters. They were formed after a meteor fell to Earth 4700 years ago. The largest of the craters is 180m wide and 15m deep and is surrounded by some beautiful country.
I re-join the Earnest Giles Road to drive across an ancient landscape of spinifex and swirling skeins of red dust through the Aboriginal Australian-owned Angas Downs Indigenous Protected Area. The orange sand of the Earnest Giles Road changes to the tarmac of the Luritja Road as I enter the Watarrka National Park, home to the yawning chasm of Kings Canyon.
Whilst checking in to the Kings Creek Station, Janet asks about my journey and her face drops... "In that?!" as she points at Bernard. Janet then describes potholes the size of the Henbury Meteorite Craters. I describe the complete opposite of this; where I could power-slide through the smooth sandy corners. Janet then shrugs and concludes that the Earnest Giles Road must have been recently graded. Lucky break I guess ;-)
Distance: 302.9km
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