Tourist time

Giles Weather Station: Burning Daylight Hours

There is limited tourist fodder out here in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands. In fact, if you actually wanted to travel out here, and follow the information provided in the guides, you'd probably get it all wrong.

The main map of Australia in the most recent (just updated) Lonely Planet Guide to Australia, 2007, doesn't even identify the unsealed road from Uluru through to Laverton. As usual, that blank space in the middle of Australia is a useful place to situate interesting notes about tourist places of greater import and attraction, such as Uluru itself. It seems hard to imagine that an (albeit unsealed) road called The Outback Highway, or alternatively, the Great Central Road could be omitted from the leading tourist guide on our country.

A more detailed regional map in the guide itself also shows that if you were to head to Uluru from Laverton, you might well end up trying to get to Uluru via South Australia (which would take an extra 8 hours if you actually did it). Part of the road including Warakurna and the Giles Weather Station that continues on to Uluru, doesn't even exist on the map! The road just peters out to nothing before the NT border.

Another road map I have, which provides detailed road information and (for outback areas) guidance on fuel stops also identifies that there is no diesel or petrol available for the 1700 k trip from Laverton to Uluru. I wonder whether the authors of this bit of information paused to consider how the local communities got their fuel supplies.

With all this misinformation, I was not surprised to see some boy scout tourists at Warakurna filling their car with fuel purchased in Alice Springs (note: there are 4 fuel outlets between Alice and Warakurna) because they thought they might get stuck. The jerry cans were being emptied into their car, next to the bowsers, to lighten their load. They had enough fuel to get to Laverton, a further 800 k away!

For all that, I do agree there are only two readily accessible tourist highlights on the Laverton to Uluru road - a tour of Giles Weather Station at Warakurna (complete with daily weather balloon release), and the Cultural Centre at Warburton. For a 2-3 day drive, it's not yet quite worth writing home about...

Unless, of course, you happen to live out here and it's a highlight of the local event calender for your visiting friends and family. It sure beats taking them to the shop between 2-4pm for a pie!

And, for those who don't like spoilsports, close your eyes for an almost real-life experience of the balloon release at Giles: