We went off in search of Helen Daniels on her painting holiday to the Bungle Bungles. These are a range of tall sandstone beehive shaped domes with orange and grey bands in Purnululu National Park.

I've been wanting to visit this place for almost twenty years after watching Helen in Neighbours go off on artistic trips to various exotic sounding locations. Bungle Bungles just seemed so surreal I knew I'd just have to go there one day.

That day had come and all that was between me and the Bungle Bungles was an eighty km four-wheel drive track.

As we drove through the access gate there were several cars parked with people inflating their tyres for the highway. We stopped and asked a guy what the road conditions were like and he informed us he'd just punctured a tyre coming out that morning. Confident in our new Bridgestone rubber we pressed on. It was the most scenic journey we've driven in Australia and for me the most fun as I weaved Ramsey round jagged rocks, over corrugations, round steep hairpin bends, and through a chunk of deep bulldust as well as numerous creek crossings.

A major crisis along the route occurred when I got out of the car to take a photo and the camera wouldn't work. We'd had an intermittent problem with it since Litchfield Park - the lens judders around and won't focus for about 30 seconds. This time I couldn't get it to calm down so here I was in the place I most wanted to visit in Australia with a broken camera. You can imagine how I was feeling. I even contemplated going back a few hundred km's and getting a new one, but I fiddled around with the camera once more and managed to get it to work.

For our first night we pitched the tent in Kurrajong which is one of the two camping grounds in the National Park (well apart from the posh luxury safari tents and lodge at Bellburn which doesn't count). On our travels around New Zealand and Australia in the last nine months we've some how managed to avoid staying at a camp which has pit toilets. I was keen on them at one time when I watched a TV series in 2006 called something along the lines of 'It's Good To Be Green' with a bearded guy in the West Country showing how to build these eco-friendly toilets and promoting how great they were. What the TV failed to show was the smell! All the pit toilets we have poked our noses in stink. But we were in the Bungle Bungles and there wasn't really any other choice. On the good side though these were the best managed pit toilets we have experienced and there was only the odd time I needed to hold my nose or put a peg on it.

With the two hour time difference in Western Australia from the east coast we found the sun sets really early. At half four we went up to Kungkalanayi to watch the sun set and only just got there before it sank below the spinifex-covered ridges. We still managed to get great views and see lovely colours in the western Bungle range but didn't have it with cold white wine and cheese & biscuits like others.

In our last blog, we said 'we don't do earlies' - well, we do in Western Australia otherwise we'd barely see any sunlight. The next morning, we set the alarm for 5:30am and got up about 5:45am!

To reach our planned morning destinations - Mini Palm Gorge and Echidna Chasm - Richard had to drive along a dry stony river bed. We spent a couple of hours walking around. The colours of the rocks were bright orange and it was hard to imagine how the area transforms in the wet season. All where we were walking would be covered in water and form part of a creek or river.

That first afternoon we re-pitched our tent on the other side of the Bungle range at Walardi campsite then headed off to see the Bungle domes. We'd asked at the visitors centre when the best time to see the domes would be and two separate people said any time. So I was a little disappointed that as we approached the range we saw just a series of black bumps, because the sun was in completely the wrong place to get the full effect of these towering objects. Still I was just happy enough to be there and found various spots to take some good photos and planned to come back early the next morning when the light would show them off to their best.

The domes are made from sandstone deposited 360 million years ago and have got their shape from creeks and weathering eroding the stone over the last 20 million years. They reach up to 250 meters high and up close have a rugged surface. It wasn't until the late 1980's that the range became significant. It was turned into a National Park in '87 and then World Heritage listed in 2003. So when Neighbours mentioned it in the early '90's it wouldn't have been much of a tourist attraction at all, and looking at photos of the old sandy track to the site it would have taken a very hefty four-wheel drive.

On our second trip out to the domes early the next morning I got to see what I wanted. The light came in from the east bringing them into full glory. We tramped over the same ground as the previous day plus also went to the Cathedral gorge.

I thoroughly enjoyed the four days we spent in the park plus the evenings staring at the milky way and stars in the sky. Even though I was glad to leave the pit toilets and get back to a proper shower rather than our solar, it's been our favourite outdoor attraction in the country so far.

Despite all my efforts though I didn't manage to find Helen Daniels - or any one else on a painting holiday for that matter.

Katy