We arrived a day ahead of schedule at Ayers Rock Campground.

We had booked a powered site, starting from tomorrow, but none were available tonight. The staff offered us the unpowered overflow campground area.

Our original plan was to charge the car at our powered site, while also running the air conditioning and accessories. Without a powered site tonight, we had to charge up the car a bit first, so we could just run it off the giant battery.

We used the auto inflate button on our Snuuzu mattress, added pillows and doona. We moved the baggage to the front seats, so the bed wasn’t obstructed. While car camping in Coober Pedy a few days ago, we discovered that even with our portable wheel ramps the car’s bed floor still leans backwards too much. So, we backed the car up a small hill as well. We used our fold up spade to fill in a couple of holes from previous campers.

We set the Tesla to “camp mode”, so we could sleep in the back of the car at 20°, while it was 3° outside, overnight.

The trudging to the toilet in the middle of the night a couple of times shocked us from our heated cocoon. And the less than double bed sized space doesn’t work well with arthritic hips. But, in theory, it was as good as we could probably get it to be.

Charging:

There are two dedicated EV chargers in Yulara. We used the free destination charger in the powered site campground to add about 15% charge to our battery, to allow for the 10% reduction overnight running the air conditioning. This charger is oddly placed between powered site 40 and 41. We awkwardly introduced ourselves to our temporary German neighbours, and used the nearby facilities and Uluru viewing platform while the car charged. Oh, and a cup of tea and a biscuit. At 11kW, it adds 300km to our car in about 4.5 hours, for free.

There are over a hundred other charging points available in Yulara, since every powered site provides 15A, to give 3.6kW. This would give our car 300km range in about 15 hours. Great while parked/camped anyway.

There’s one petrol station in Yulara, where fuel costs just under $3 per litre.