Oct 7-12 - (Day 250 - 255) - Tennant Creek - Alice Springs

Sorry for the delay getting these posted! We're working on catching up. Currently October 23 and just leaving Alice Springs for what we expect to be the last time!

 Wednesday 7 October

 Last night at 2.30am we go the fright of our lives when a train went whizzing by. We knew it would happen but it just sounded so loud. We were camped fairly close to the line so we should have been expecting it and we had seen one go back during the evening last night but when you are asleep and then get woken by a loud thunder that seems to get louder it does get the heart racing for a little while until you come into consciousness and realise what is actually happening. In the main we had quite a peaceful sleep.

We headed down the Stuart Highway and did our morning reading. During the reading there had been some disagreement between the boys that needed to be addressed so we talked through that to come to some resolution. This is the reality of travelling, and you may have seen our intention to run a Q&A soon on full-time travel. It's not all fun and games, there are definitely challenges; but the benefit is that you have the time to sit down and work through them. 

Anyway no more spoilers on what we might or might not talk about! While chatting we arrived at...

 

The Devil's Marbles

This place is incredible. We've been here before but the size of these rocks is unbelievable each time, as you can see from some of the photos.

There is this wide plain of all sorts of granite boulders in all sorts of configurations.

Clearly, they're quite enormous rocks!

(Greg jumping in on the commentary here...) Bek was relaxing on a rock so I took the opportunity to grab a photo of her. Then Mim came along so I got her to join in too.

After that I held onto the camera for a bit and managed to capture this lovely little sequence which played itself out!

 

(Back to Mim!) We carried on and saw more evidence of the recent rains. In fact I forgot to mention but when we were in Mataranka we looked at the forecast for Alice Springs and it was 17 with rain! We were rather confused by that, we simply couldn't believe it could be so cold and wet in Alice!

More clouds!

Some standing water in a field near Taylor Creek

On our travels down the Stuart Highway we haven't seen that many cars to be honest. When it was school holidays there were more people out and about but it's really died down again. We pulled into Barrow Creek for lunch.

We stopped at Aileron to top up the tank from the jerry cans. Thankfully we have 3 jerry cans which have been so useful for when we have been through areas where the price of fuel has been expensive we top up with the jerry's and then fill them back up when we come into a town where the price is a lot more reasonable. 

We visited Aileron spot on our last trip and climbed the hill in behind the campground and petrol station and saw the camels off in the distance but they didn't seem that interested last time but they came up so close this time around.

The wide open road. About 50km north of Alice Springs

 

 

We travelled another 100km then decided we'd had enough driving for the day, so found a lovely free spot about 30km north of Alice, a few hundred metres west of the Stuart Highway. It's basically just tracks, bush and red dirt but it's all we need. We can just hear a rumble of the road noise but we aren't that close that it's going to be a disturbance.

Here Greg is fixing yet another thing. This time the automatic soap dispenser. Such a handy chap. :)

 After enjoying the coolness of the outside we retired to the van for the evening and enjoyed chatting for a a while about various things we'd done and just general chatter. The boys decided to have a push-ups competition, so of course us girls needed to join in as well but not quite the same as the boys!

We made a cup of nice warm ovaltine and played a game of Uno before heading to bed.

 

Thursday 8 October - Friday 9 October

We had a peaceful nights sleep in the quiet of the bush without the interruptions of freight trains whizzing past and giving us the fright of our lives. Today we are just having a quiet day catching up on business & school work while we have signal. We enjoyed a nice warm cooked breakfast by Bek of bacon and eggs and sat partly in the sun and shade to do our morning readings in 1 Chronicles. All the names can be quite tricky but following through the Levitical line and who they came from can be an interesting search.

 Today was the day the boys needed another haircut. It's been so long since the last. (just checked and it was back at the end of July at the start of our Cape York Trip)

One thing's for certain - if we're in an area with privacy and vehicle tracks, Matt's going to ask for a driving lesson! They all had a go in the end, this was with Jude.

Saturday 10 October

We packed up the camp and headed down towards Alice Springs, passing the Tropic of Capricon for what we thought would be the last time. The Tropic of Capricorn runs about 20km north of Alice Springs.

 

Apparently our general 'blah-ness' and irritability is normal during the build-up!

 

 

The only other feature of interest on this section of the Stuart Highway was this cairn marking the highest point above sea level on the Stuart Highway.

We made it back!

Flashback time! Here we are in 2020...

... and this was back in 2017!

Once we got into Alice we stopped off at the Old Telegraph Station. We'd been to the equivalent place in Tennant Creek but this was much larger. Some lovely old buildings and interesting history about how things used to work.

An old pillar box from Queen Victoria's time - hence the VR!

The original 'Alice Spring' is by the old telegraph station, although it's not a spring, just a waterhole which these days is often dry!

The sign with the location in the photo in the background

Once we got into town we treated ourselves to some fast food! Haven't had this for a long time!

Out the front was this old Holden! The chap was very happy to show it off to us.

This all done we headed down to the Heritage Caravan Park for the night.

Sunday 11 October

We had gotten in contact with a brother and sister in Alice Springs to see if we could have a meeting with them but they weren't able to today, so we had a quiet morning. We visited the Tod Mall Markets for a little while then headed back to the caravan park and had our meeting.

As it is quite hot up this way we often get in and out of the water to keep cool. This time we brought a ball into the pool which we had basically to ourselves and Greg through to the kids and they tried to catch it while jumping into the water.

Later in the afternoon we felt like pizza for dinner so we headed off towards town, however on the way we received a text message from the same brother and sister asking if we'd like to come for dinner. We also had a message from Nathaniel Cole who now lives up here asking if we would like to catch up, and to also let us know some others from Adelaide were staying in a neighbouring caravan park.  

We enjoyed a lovely curry dinner and enjoyed meeting another Brother Steven and Sister Anitha and their daughter. It's so lovely to go to different places and feel so welcome and have the same hope.

 

 Monday 12 October

 We had a quiet today getting some school and business work done but we still felt like pizza! It's surprising what you crave when you're away from civilisation for a while! So later on in the evening we ordered pizza and enjoyed it on the lawn outside the local police HQ!

Sunset against the Supreme Court building

 -- Mim and Greg