OUTBACK ODYSSEY - RENNER SPRINGS TO ALICE SPRINGS

Day 8 - Renner Springs to Alice

After a dreadful nights' sleep, we were up at dawn and happy to leave. Our first stop was at the Devil's Pebbles which is different to the Devil's Marbles. These are also known as Kunjara and are about 6km off the main highway. We walked the short walk winding in and out through the pebbles but it was quite cold. There was a rubbish bin at the carpark which had been painted aboriginal style - a great piece of art!

We pushed on to Tennant Creek, having a look at the Tennant Creek Telegraph station on the way. Tennant Creek was smaller than I expected and there was really nothing of interest there. We stopped to have lunch at the BP service station and came across the worst toilets - dirty, no toilet paper or soap and just grotty.

The turnoff to the Devil's Marbles is just before Wauchope. The Marbles are just a larger version of the pebbles and spread out over a greater area. There are so many interesting shapes that I doubt you would ever see two photo's alike. There are two areas where you can park and walk around in amongst the rocks and there is a basic campground but no grass, just endless red dirt!

Most of the places along the Stuart Highway are roadhouses or pubs rather than small towns. Wauchope and Wycliffe Well are no exception. Wauchope has a pub and Wycliffe Well is a Big 4 caravan park with a rather unusual drawcard - a couple of life-size aliens and their spaceship out the front! Apparently Wycliffe Well is one of the top 5 places in the world for seeing UFO's and they've used some clever marketing to put themselves on the map.

By this time we had decided to press onto Alice Springs so we kept going, stopping briefly at Red Centre Farm just south of Ti Tree for a mango ice cream and some mango wine. There is an aquifer just under Ti Tree with around 800 years supply of water and they grow grapes and mangoes - definitely not something I expected to find in Central Australia!

About 100km north of Alice Springs we were flagged down by some Chinese tourists who had run off the road. Their navy blue Camry was now covered in bright orange dust and they had managed to peel 3 of their tyres off the rims and take off the front fender in the process. Unfortunately, they didn't speak a word of English and we didn't have mobile phone coverage. Luckily a community nurse drove past and she had a satelite phone so she contacted the police. There wasn't anything else that we could do so we pushed on towards Alice Springs as it was now quite late in the afternoon. We finally arrived in Alice Springs just on dusk and fortunately we were able to stay in the cabin that we had booked for the next day. It had been such a long day of driving but it was worth it because we knew we didn't have to camp or travel in the morning.

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