Day 100 - Saturday 13th April 2024

Day 100! That barely seems possible!

The latest video is now live and can be found here.

Today was, if I've calculated things correctly, the greatest distance that I'll drive in a day on this whole trip. Up with the alarm, packed up, and refuelled, I pulled back onto the Stuart Highway at 07:30, set the cruise control and settled in for a drive that was estimated to last until after 15:00.

The road was once again pretty empty, and two hours in I had my first stop at Marla. A stop long enough to answer the call of nature and purchase a coffee, and I was back onto the road once more. I happened across three vehicles who were travelling in convoy (notable only due to the fact that any traffic on my side of the road was a rarity!), and went past them and into the Northern Territory where I'll be spending the next two weeks.

A new speed limit of 130 kph dialled in, I passed the first sign to mention Darwin that I've seen telling me that it was 1772 kilometres distant. The second stop was at the roadhouse at Ghan at 12:30, where I refuelled for the second time today (an expensive undertaking in the middle of nowhere!) and turned off of the Stuart Highway and onto the Lasseter Highway to Uluru (or Ayers Rock).

As I drove towards Uluru, a doppelganger rock was visible to my left; this was Mount Connor which is often mistaken for Uluru and has therefore earned the nickname 'Fooluru'. It's almost 150km away from Uluru, but I stopped at the lookout, donned my flynet on my hat to ward off the flys, and went to capture some footage. It was at this moment that my camera decided not to work, so I captured what I could with the GoPro.


On returning to the car I discovered that it was definitely user error; some numpty had failed to charge it, and the battery was exhausted!

Back onto the road, and I arrived at my Uluru hotel at 15:00; all unpacked (and the camera on charge), I had a few admin items to take care of. First was purchasing my park entry pass for the next couple of days. I then checked the details of the Kings Canyon trip I'm doing on Tuesday, and noticed that I need a Northern Territories National Park pass to get into Kings Canyon, so I bought a two week pass for that as I'll be in the Northern Territories for exactly two weeks.

I then went to the lookout in the centre of the resort to get some footage of Uluru before going into the park tomorrow to explore a bit closer.


Dinner, then my weekly call with Mum in the new time slot as the 07:00 local time slot that I've been using is a little late as I'm moving further west; it would have been 10:30pm in the UK!

Today has been a long and tiring day, but at least I now get to settle here for 5 nights before moving on. Hell, I might even unpack!

 

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