We left King's Canyon this morning and headed about 100 miles south to pick up the Lassiter Highway again and go on to Alice Springs. Total distance was about 300 miles or so.
The terrain was pretty much what we've been seeing in the "Red Centre" and is really a lot like what you see in the American Southwest. Rolling hills, some mountain ranges (although they're not very high or long here), scrub brush, and an occasional animal.
We stopped at the Henbury Meteor Craters, about 15 miles off the highway up a rough gravel road and about 75 miles south of Alice Springs. There was one big crater here about 300 feet across and maybe 50 feet deep, created about 4,000 years ago when a larger meteorite collided with the ground here. There were supposedly another 28 or so smaller craters in the area, but I couldn't see them. Interestingly enough, US astronauts visited the area in preparation for the Apollo moon landings in the 1960's.
We left the crater area and headed on to Alice Springs for the night. We have some sightseeing to do tomorrow, and then we're flying out to Cairns tomorrow evening.
I promise...pictures once we get to Cairns!
This is a picture from down in King's Canyon itself...actually, not all that spectacular:
On down the road at the corner of Luritja Road and Lassiter Highway was this one sign of civilization. You can also get an idea of how desolate central Australia is:
We mentioned the Henbury Meteor Crater National Park, and here is a picture of the crater itself:
To give you some idea of how rough the terrain is and how rough the road itself is, take a look at this:
We had stopped along the way to fill up on petrol at about $9.00/gallon and the little oasis had some wildlife penned up. Pat made friends with this little bloke:
Pat's Paragraph.... This little emu was looking for bugs. Did you know that emus are the Best Dads ever? The mom emu lays the eggs. Dad built her the nest. She does her thing and then she is done. Over. Nada. Dad sits on the eggs for 8 weeks until they hatch and stays with the chicks totally. He protects them, helps them to find food and teaches them what they need to learn about being an emu. Another head scratcher... don't you think it's odd that the emu is in Australia, a huge flightless bird with long legs and the ostrich is in Africa, a huge flightless bird with long legs. They are so much alike you can confuse them if they aren't standing side by side. Two continents and they developed an animal so similar? Things like that make me think.............
and this big fellow ran across the road in front of us on our drive. We figure he is between 36 to 40 inches long, and when we described him to one of the park rangers, we were told it was probably a 'sand gurana', which is a member of the monitor family. He is the 3rd largest member. His big cousin is the second largest, the perenti, also found in Australia that could grow up to 80 inches! ( the largest member is the Komodo dragons) We saw a juvenile perenti at the park and he was already this large. We were also told that all the members of the monitor family will fight for their food so you don't want to interrupt their dining pleasure. I promise!
