21 July - Day 7 - Erldunda

Left Coober Pedy this morning after a milder night and continued our trek north to the centre of Australia. Our planned destination for today was Erlduna which is where we leave the Stuart Highway tomorrow for our trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock). The very good road continued to cross desert cattle stations with very little signs of wildlife, or cattle. The only relief is the odd roadside service station which serves as fuel stop, motel and caravan park. We stopped for fuel at Marla and reached Elrdunda mid afternoon. We spent the night in a very pleasant caravan park at the back of this huge service station complex. It is quite an amazing feeling enjoying the comforts of our caravan in the middle of one of the largest deserts in the world. Right next to our van a flock of Galahs had their afternoon chat in a nearby tree - quite a sight.

One great feature of this park is that it features an elevated viewing platform for viewing the sensational sunsets which are part of desert life and although it originally didn't look like much we were really grateful that we made the effort to walk up there after dinner and witness the most amazing sunsets we've ever seen.

I took about 40 photos because every 10 seconds or so the sunset changed completely. At one stage as the sun reached the point where is was shining horizontally through the desert atmosphere, a huge orange glow erupted almost like an explosion.

Within a few minutes the sun disappeared and started illuminating the underside of all the clouds in front of us, a completely different effect again.

An incredible end to the day and one we'll never forget.

Tomorrow we turn on to the Lassiter Highway for the 270km trip to Uluru.