Day 25: Mt Hart Wilderness Lodge

No driving today, just a helicopter ride, a hike to a swimming hole and a sunset walk.

Nice meals here in the middle of nowhere, but no fussing about dietary requirements (Larapinta was a nightmare as we only had camp cooking, but they had to cater for meat-lovers, vegetarians, vegans, pescatarians and gluten free). In Mt Hart, everybody gets lamb or fish for dinner, and eggs, sausage and bacon for breakfast. And everybody gets full cream milk. They call this "chef's choice".

 

Helicopter flight this morning, in this: 

Videos:

Talking off.

Flying over gorge.

The pilot (whose name was “Eagle”, I kid you not - they all have "adventure" names) mentioned that it took him 5 hours to travel here on the 50km driveway when he arrived this season before the road was graded. “The road was graded!?” was my response. Anyway, great views over the area with heaps of rivers, waterfalls and gorges. Some videos are here, here and here and pics below.

View of the campground

 

Afternoon was an 8km return walk to Barker’s Pool swimming hole, pics below. Chilling until dinner and filling in forms for missing number plates.

Michele at Barker's Pool

 

Vehicle update: forgot to mention the 2^nd crack in the windscreen we found on returning to Alice Springs from the Larapinta. I left the car in the sun where it was exposed to near freezing overnight and hot days and what started as a tiny tiny chip over the sensors at the top turned into a crack. This could be a design fault but from what I can tell, nearly all windscreens (including this one) are made by one company: Pilkington in Poland. Maybe Land Rover didn’t fork out for the high quality ones? Anyway, the windscreen is now held together with resin (we had some more windscreen glue ready) and there is no number plate on the front. I reckon if it gets to Darwin in one piece (where our new windscreen is waiting) it will be a win. On the plus side, I have been hammering it over huge potholes, rocks, water crossings and corrugations and it hasn’t flinched yet. Interestingly, that kind of driving doesn’t seem to affect the windscreen cracks.