Up at 5am, and it sounds like where not the only ones. Get everyone ready and we drive the 10km over to the National Park and the start of the walk right on 6.
As we get ready we are behind a tour group, their guide says “there are 500 bush steps up Heart Attack Hill and we need to up there in 30mins as there is another bus load coming up behind us”. Mmmm sounds inviting. The walk up is not actually as bad as I was expecting, although I’m not sure Justine’s Mum would agree. And the view is pretty impressive. Around every corner there is another view. Early on there are the bee hive mounds and then we get to the Canyon itself with it’s straight cliff walls. Everyone talks about the start being difficult, but there is quite a bit of up and down sections. In the middle you need to transverse two large staircases. Here there is a side walk off to a waterhole, but this adds about 30mins and is a steep decent so we’ll give this a miss. After about 3.5 hr we return down the hill and get back to the car. It’s damn hot for 9:30 in the morning.
This is a great walk and really glad we did it. I can see now why Kings Canyon needs to be on your list when you’re in this part of the world. Very different from Uluru and Kata Tjutu, but that’s part of the magic. Being up on the rim, make you feel like you are standing top of the world.
Even though it seemed like there where a number of tour buses, and cars, the walk didn’t feel crowded and I was happy to see weren’t overtaken by heaps of walkers. Only a few group of 20-somethings passed us.
Back to the Kings Canyon Resort for a quick shower and pack up, we purchase the permit (only $5.50) so we can hit the dirt on the Mereenie loop, a stretch of about 140km of dirt road that will bring us in the west end of the West MacDonnell Ranges. Ideally saving 700 odd k’s and going back via the Stuart Highway
15km from the resort we leave the national park and enter Aboriginal land and the dirt starts. It’s is easy to start with. You are not really allowed to stop on this road except for one picnic area about 40km into the road. You’re allowed to camp here overnight, but as it’s only 11:30 when we get there we use this as a lunch stop.
The road is pretty corrugated and like the Plenty Highway I find you need to get up to about 70-80km/h to smooth out the ruts. After the first 50km or so the corrugations are joined with flood ways, rather deep dips, we can only take these dips at 10-15km/h but that make the corrugations unbearable. So for quite a lot of the road we are barely doing walking pace. When it seems the road is improving I try and get up to 80, sometime this is ok for a k’ or so, but in a lot of case as soon as we get up to speed the road worsens or there is a dip and we need to slow down again.
About halfway we come across a huge willy willy (small dust tornado), probably about 4-5mtrs across at the base, these things normally last a few seconds, but this one stays on the road and keeps going for several minutes. Eventually it wanders off the road and into the bushes by the side of the road and dies down.
Finally we reach the tar and the intersection of Larapinta Dr and Namatjira Dr, both lead back to Alice Springs. We pull over the re-inflate the tyres. We’ve survived with no punctures, but on opening the van we find shattered glass all over the floor. The oven door has smashed and as its safety glass it has shattered into a thousand pieces. Damn! In hindsight, while I’d do the Plenty, I’m not sure if I would do this road again. It’s a huge shortcut, but at the moment is also a really rough road to tow a van through.
At this intersection I want to take the north road (Outer Mereenie loop) which leads to West Macs, but I also wanted to add Palm Valley to this which is a 50km detour on the south road (Inner Loop). We’ve got time in our schedule, but the road is it classed 4×4 and off road caravan only. We know what happened last time. I’ve spoken to a few people who said is not too bad so we make the call to go there tonight. When we arrive at the turn off we find it is 22km of dirt to the campground, we push on anyway. The road is OK, its wide at least, but I do most of it between 10-20k/h.
We cross the dry Finke river several times. I don’t mind this pace as it gives me a chance to look out at the valley we’re driving into, its pretty spectacular. An hour later we arrive at a really nice campground. There end up being only two other campers here tonight. It feels like we’ve got the place to ourselves. The road is easy, and could have really been done in a 2wd.
The Finke Riverbed is the road 
There are two other campers here. An older German lady in a converted troopy, shes been in Australia for years, based in Byron, it seems like she has been traveling around for a while. The other is a older French lady who is in Australia on an extended holiday. She’s driving around and sleeping in a Nissan X-Trail. lets just say I’m glad we’re in a van. We chat briefly with both, and they seems pleasant enough. Good to see them out and traveling by themselves.
Update
Looking back now, I think because the Plenty Highway was relatively easy, I set this as the benchmark. While there were sections of this road that we did at near walking pace, I probably should have done more at this speed. I can’t say I was trying to keep the pace up for any specific reason, but I guess subconsciously I wanted to finish the road quickly enough to get to Palm Valley before dark. It’s just frustrating that the corrugations are so bad at anything between 5-10km/h and 60-70km/h
If I had my time again, I’d maybe not try and to the Canyon walk and this road in the same day. This was about 150km of dirt, say half of it, 70km, was pretty bad, maybe I need to accept it could take 6-7hrs to do it if that’s what the conditions dictated.