Is Shug the 'Wizard of Oz?

[2Strokeit]

Fair dinkum that's a clickbait title!!
This is my trip report of my family's adventures into the Red Centre of Australia.
My wife had been wanting to show myself then the family Uluru (Ayers Rock) Kings Canyon for 20 years. We've traipsed the tin lids over most of the Coastal areas nth, sth, east and some west and it was time to explore the Red Centre.
Most campers in the outback use caravans, camper trailers, roof top tents, tents and swags.
Locals prefer Swags or cowboy rolls.
Minimal rain results in smaller sparse hammock suitable trees so I bought Tensa4s for the family as we took a plane to Alice Springs and met up with our daughter who has been working a gap year on a cattle station out here.
So I'll put up some highlight photos for those with short attention spans... then explain more in-depth.

[2Strokeit]

Where is Uluru (Ayers Rock).
About 500klm (300 mikes) west of the middle of Australia, Aussies don't like to overstate things so we call all that area the Red Centre.
Most tourist do the 3 or 4 whistle-stop highlight tour of Oz being Sydney/ the Rock/ the Reef / Koala or Kangaroo but that would be like LA/ Grand Canyon / New York and sayin ya seen US of A.
It's about 3500 klms (2100 miles) from home, we would normally take the 4wd but uncertainty about covid lockdowns meant we took a plane and our daughter met us in my other 4wd.
Day 1 saw us drive from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock Resort camping ground taking in some tourist detours, rainbow valley, emus.
We set up the Tensa4s in a triangle formation which the wife dubbed the 'starship', my young bloke adding glow sticks to the guy lines meant that nickname has now stuck.
Drove into the National Park to watch the sun go down on the Rock. It's a must do. Watching the colours and shadows change was worth the effort.

[2Strokeit]

Day 2
Up at 4 to have a gander at 'The field of lights' 40 thousand lights that change colour to mimic the wildfowers that explode after the rains.
The Rock appears in the background in the morning light and we got to see Kata Tjuta ( the olgas) which we would hike later today.
They've done a good job of the art installation and having hardly any other tourist there was pretty special. Usually us banana benders (Queenslanders) are out numbered by the Mexicans (2 southern states of NSW and Vic) and the Aussies are totally outnumbered by the Japanese tourist buses.
Back for breakfast then pack the backpack. Four stock whips and a hammock some nibblies and water.

Touted a tensa4 and hammock up to a suitable spot for some brag photos or ' how embarrassment DADD' moment.
The echo's of the whips was cool. Cool as a 38°c (100°f) day can get, lucky it was the last day of winter.

[Rifleman]

Beautiful photos!!

[tlfillingim]

Man. That looks like fun.


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[2Strokeit]

Back for a lap of the Rock.
The second photo shows the track tourists used to take up the Rock, but it's closed now for cultural reasons.
Stayed at Curtin Springs free campground as it was on our way to Watarrka (Kings Canyon).

[2Strokeit]

Day 3
Drive up to King Creek Station and stop at lookouts and creeks and get ready for our hike tomorrow.
Kings Canyon is north of Uluru.
Kings Canyon Resort is closer to the rim walk but they had a grass fire threatening when we booked accommodation so were happy at Kings Creek station.
Good meals and a pool in 36°c.
We set up under a tree for some shade. No tarps needed on this trip. My daughter slept in her swag for all of this trip, but still prefers her diy costco quilt over a sleeping bag.

[Africanintexas]

Awesome post..I have a brother in WA and he may as well be in another hemisphere than you. Australia is one big country! I used to use swags while I still lived in Southern Africa but now I think about it hammocks make a lot of sense in place with notable creepies. If you can find a suitable pair of trees that is!

Oh and in answer to your original question..yes he is!!


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[VanillaPoltergeist]

Great photos! What a beautiful place. Those tensa stands sure do come in handy.

[Latherdome]

Awesome photos! May Tensa Outdoor add some to product gallery?

Nothing wrong with your setup, but you may want to experiment with linking stands together, to minimize components needed. You can hang 3 hammocks using 10 instead of 12 poles, all sharing a single guyline/anchor for the foot ends. Start by setting up one normally. Then set up one adjacent using only 3 poles, sharing one in common, both using the one guyline. Repeat with a third. The 3 will form a semicircle roughly, the several feet arranged arc-wise lending stability to the whole. 6 hammocks complete a circle like this using 4.5 stands’ worth of poles.

Since some poles are shared across stands this way, there’s probably some impact on max user weight that we haven’t worked out, so be careful if you’re heavy. And no, we haven’t figured out a great way to tarp stands thus joined, but that doesn’t seem essential in the desert.