Kings Canyon
Our quiet overnight to Kings Canyon turns into an adventure. On Saturday morning, we head out on a drive to Kings Canyon Resort, where a deluxe spa room, champagne, buffet dinner and breakfast awaited us. The first five hours of the drive were uneventful... the weather was perfect, the creek crossings minimal - until Stoker Creek, 35 km outside of Kings Canyon, 3 km past King's Creek...
p0000001640 x 426 Rest stop, dominated by Desert Oaks and red sand dunes. Even a slight breeze causes a eerie whispery sound in the oaks, like and unlike wind in pine trees. |
p0000003640 x 426 A 'road train' at Kings Creek. I don't remember the name of the caterpillars, but they really do travel like this! This is a few minutes before our adventure began. |
| For those who aren't familiar with the area, in this part of the world they don't usually bother building bridges across the usually dry riverbeds. This is of course, usually not a problem. Unless it rains... which it did earlier in the week. |
p0000004640 x 426 Stoker Creek. When we started this adventure, we were on the other side of all this water and there was a minivan sitting - literally - dead in the water about halfway across. Both ends of the crossing had cars hanging out, with the drivers assessing the situation. Well, not really thinking (we'd been driving for 5 hours and were looking forward to that spa, I suppose, and we thought since we had a pickup truck [ute] we should have the clearance) John plunged right in - got halfway through and stalled. Darn. Pushed it back out, assessed the situation (truck not starting, King's Canyon on the wrong side of the water). Decided to push it through to the other side (perhaps a hundred or so feet of water, at about 1.5' deep (the gauge read just under .4M)... |
p0000005640 x 426 ...Stop behind the minivan - which was pushed through before us - and hang out with the tourists from Adelaide and Michigan for about 2 hours. Truck still not starting. Minivan not starting either. Try popping the clutch (here's a fun thing for a sunny afternoon - push a pickup truck as fast as you can up that bit of a grade. Some exercise there, yup), no luck. Took a couple of pictures while we waited...
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p0000007640 x 426 A 4x4 crossing Stoker Creek. It is just passing through the deepest part. Notice that the bow wave is small, indicating it is going quite slow, which is what you are supposed to do when crossing deep water. |
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p0000006640 x 426 The nearest tow truck is 200k away, so after about two hours we start flagging down 4wd trucks as they get through the ford. The minivan and passengers finally found a tow. We find a tow a short time later, and an even shorter time later wish we'd waited for someone else - our tow vehicle was a 4wd minibus full of German tourists, and the driver did not know how to tow. Pulled us along at about 80kph, and us with almost no brakes (power assist). 35k of sheer terror. We managed not to rear-end them, or run over the chain, but it was not a fun ride. Lots of getting jerked around. |
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But we finally made it to King's Canyon.
Truck still dead. Well, to make a long story a little shorter, the
mechanic worked on it a bit, told us to let it sit and *don't* try to
start it again, and he'd take a look at it in the morning. We make
plans to be stranded at Kings Canyon (found out the other vehicle's
engine completely seized - but the mechanic was pretty positive about
John's truck).
In my current job, I've learned how to not worry if I can't do anything about a situation, so I didn't worry, and enjoyed the spa, champagne and dinner (a nice buffet dinner with seafood and some native foods, like roo and crocodile), then the spa again. The spa had a big picture window looking over the rocky landscape, and a nice little open patio next to it. King-sized bed. Huge bathroom. etc. Very, very nice room.Only sour note is the room came complete with mice - not unexpected in the outback - but one was a very friendly mouse and wanted to join us in bed, when he wasn't trying to get into my bag of pretzels or exploring who-knows-what in the night.Next morning, we do the morning thing, and have a very nice cup of coffee on that little patio, watching the sunrise (we had an eastern view) and listening to the water gurgle (runoff through the rocks). Went over and spent some time with the truck & mechanic, while he removed the sparks, and John cranked the engine while the mechanic (Peter) and I watched a mixture of water and fuel spurt out of the empty spark plug holes. After a time of this and other mechanic activities, Peter - who's obviously dealt with this problem many times before - decided we needed to wait a bit longer, and we all went off to breakfast - we enjoyed our buffet breakfast (very nice spread). Came back, he messed with the engine a bit more, and *finally* the truck started. And has been fine since, if a little rough in the beginning. Peter the mechanic was great - he helped us out on his day off, and only charged us a minimal amount for the service. |
p0000009524 x 480 So Sunday morning we finally actually went to Kings Canyon, though we did the valley walk instead of the rim walk we'd planned on. It was a beautiful, cool morning and we quite enjoyed the walk, though I uncharacteristically only took a couple of pictures: Fearless Spinifex Pidgeons along King's Creek. Notice how well they blend into even the plain rock. |
p0000010390 x 480 Spinifex Pigeon |
p0000011640 x 398 Looking directly down at this Spinifex Pigeon. He has a personal space of about 2". |
p0000012640 x 426 King's Canyon, looking at the end of what we'd call a box canyon in the states. The cleft is where the waterfall comes down in wetter weather. There's a bit of a trickle which is more visible in subsequent images. |
p0000013640 x 426 You can see the waterfall if you look just below the lone tree at the top of the cleft. |
p0000014640 x 426 Right wall of King's Canyon |
p0000016640 x 426 The waterfall (not much of one at the moment) is a bit more visible in this picture, if you look at the full sized image. |
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When we crossed Stoker Creek on the way
back, we did what we should have done the first time - sock up the
tailpipe, wool blanket (we didn't have a tarp) over the front, and
pushed it across.
We made it home though, and the long drive cleared out any remaining water in the engine.After, of course, pushing across yet another set of tourists who killed a rental car halfway across, even though the water had gone down to about .25m overnight (about a foot?) As far as I know, in a 24 hour period, Stoker Creek has killed at least three rental cars. We heard that the kids in the minivan are looking at a $5,000.00 charge - expensive rental. So our pampering weekend turned into a major "learning experience". We now know that .4m of water is too much, and how to get a vehicle safely across anyway. And we know what to do (and what NOT to do, even more important) if a vehicle does inhale some water. |
p0000018640 x 426 Me, at that Desert Oak rest stop again, safely past Stoker Creek. |
p0000019640 x 426 John and the "I'm Not Dead Yet!" truck at the same rest stop. |
This page created on 28 Mar 2001
