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Arriving back into Darwin after our jolly in Bali, we eventually managed to convince the immigration officer that despite her intuition we really aren’t illegally working our way around Oz (and we’re really not!) and finally stamped in for another six months were reunited with Tilly, our van. Obviously upset that we’d abandoned her for a week, she’d decided to leak clutch and brake fluid everywhere. We managed to limp round to the caravan park we’d previously stayed in which was still locked up for the night, and so ended up sleeping on the side of the road for a few hours. The next day, $500 and a rebuilt master cylinder later, we were on our way south towards Melbourne.
Heading down “the track”, as the Stuart Highway is often referred to, we passed dozens and dozens of caravans and campervans travelling towards Darwin, the annual grey nomad migration north for the winter. We’ve been told countless times that we’re travelling the wrong way round Australia, what with the headwind increasing fuel consumption, and the extra mileage of driving clockwise round Oz rather than the shorter anti-clockwise route (we wonder what difference that really does make?!) but surely a thousand
pensioners and their dogs can’t be wrong? Maybe we are going the wrong way. Oh well, too late now!
The first night we stopped at Hayes Creek and then carried on to Larrimah, briefly stopping for a hot sulphurous swim at Bitter Springs near Mataranka. The Stuart Highway really came into its own when it was used during the war to transport troops and supplies by road across the 900km gap between the railway from Adelaide at Alice Springs and the North Australian Railway at Birdum. Neighbouring Larrimah became the main railhead, snatching not only the glory away from Birdum but also the local pub which was dismantled and relocated. We stayed at the caravan park at the pub which is now the Larrimah Wayside Inn. A corrugated iron building, its full of interesting old junk and there’s even a couple of half melted (apparently) spitfire engines outside. A larger than life concrete Pink Panther sits outside drinking a Darwin Stubby (the worlds largest beer bottle - 2 litres). Back in the 1960s, a hole appeared in the road where a water pipe burst cutting off supplies to the township. For weeks the water board failed to fix it,
Drop Bear
Daly Waters always coming “next week”, and eventually the locals made the Pink Panther and sat him with his beer and fishing rod alongside the hole, nearly blocking the road, with a sign on his back thanking the water board for the fish pond. Within a week it had been repaired!
The next day we popped into Daly Waters which is a roadhouse with even more junk than Larrimah, and a bit of history in that it used to serve the adjacent airfield where the early Qantas flights used to stop to drop off post and refuel. The passengers had 25 minutes to get a quick beer before their flight took off again. Then after a night in Renner Springs we carried on to Tennant Creek, a town summed up by the official tourist brochure listing the caravan toilet dump point as a tourist attraction.
The Devils Marbles were our next overnight stop, in the packed campsite just feet from the nearest rocks, and then we carried on to Australia’s answer to Area 51, Wycliffe Well. Apparently a UFO hotspot, the brochure for the roadhouse says, rather optimistically, that “you’d be unlucky not to see one”. We asked the barmaid
if she had seen one, and funny we should ask, yes she had, only the previous week. Two truckers had seen the bright light descend over the road as well and filmed it on their phones, she was waiting for them to drop a copy of the video in to her. Any day now. Making the most of the roadhouse’s infamy, the owner has turned it into a bit of a UFO museum, with newspaper articles plastered all over the walls and various aliens and crashed UFOs scattered over the site. Unfortunately we didn’t have any close encounters, although that was probably because we didn’t work our way too far through their largest selection of beers in the Northern Territory. It was a pretty good caravan park though and we almost stayed a second night.
Instead, the next day we drove the 400km to Alice Springs where we ended up staying for a few days. We came here about seven years ago and remember liking the town, and although it seems to have grown a fair bit since then still seems like a nice place. In fact, we’re hoping to move there for a while sometime in the future
Tels Chopper!
Thought that Pleasure Flight was Too Cheap! so Claire can do some outback nursing, and it was good to spend some time there again to get a feel for the place. We took a trip up to the West MacDonnell Ranges and stayed a night at the campsite at Ormiston Gorge and then another in a free site at Point Howard with one of the best views of our trip, looking along the ranges directly towards the sunset.
After another couple of days back in Alice, we headed south again down towards Uluru or Ayres Rock. We'd heard of a singing Dingo in a roadhouse on the way down, so popped in to Stuarts Well to see it. Dinky is a 8 year old Dingo who has been raised since a pup and is famous for playing the piano and singing, apparently, even featuring as a trivial pursuit question. We arrived just in time to see his latest performance, presumably one of many each day, and watched him woken from his contented sleep in the sun and plonked on the piano where he wobbled around a bit and howled. Afterwards he sat back down in the sun and sadly looked into the distance, maybe thinking of
Bloody Good Idea!
At Daly Waters Pub the kangaroos he'll never be able to chase. Claire asked if she could stroke him and Jim, his owner, said no don't stare him in the eyes or approach him. Obviously once a wild dingo if even only for a few weeks, always a wild dingo.
We came to Uluru seven years ago as well, but it was still an experience to see the rock again. Its one attraction that we think really does live up to its hype. The colours and textures of Uluru and The Olgas nearby really have to be seen to be believed. Before we saw it for the first time we though the bright orange colour shown in photos was enhanced a bit, but at sunrise and sunset that’s the colour they really go. It looks like some surreal sculpture, in places like some Daliesque molten cheese. The contours and textures are so varied in different areas of the rock, many bits of it would be completely unrecognisable to anyone only familiar with the cliched sunset photo.
There seemed many more tourists than last time, sunrise at Uluru in particular wasn’t exactly a solitary experience, but its such a big rock (about 9km
in circumference) that as you start walking around it, you’re soon on your own. The Anangu traditional owners of the area ask that people respect their beliefs and don’t climb the rock. The route up is that taken by the ancestors during The Dreaming, or the time of creation, and the Anangu themselves don’t climb it, or at least only specially initiated individuals do. Tourists breathlessly pulling themselves up the chain to the summit are being no less disrespectful to the Anangu’s beliefs than if the aborigines had come over to London and peed in the font of St Paul’s Cathedral. Although the Anangu are supposed to be joint managers of the park, it makes you wonder how much power they really have if climbing is still allowed. There’s quite a big deal made of the Anangu asking tourists not to climb, it seems though that their wishes are overruled presumably incase a ban affected tourism income.
We stayed at Yulara or the Ayres Rock Resort (about 18km from Uluru) for two nights and saw sunrise and sunset at Uluru, and sunrise at The Olgas before then walking the Valley of the Winds Walk there. The Olgas or Kata
Tjuta are actually something like 200 metres higher than Ayres Rock and although maybe not quite so well known are also an impressive sight.
That’s all behind us now, we’re two days drive further south in Coober Pedy, probably the dustiest place we’ve ever been to! More in the next blog.
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carla
non-member comment
hello!! i am the bearer of good news!!
well i must say i think these photos are some of the best yet, very good indeed. i particularly love the one of you both at the rock with big smiley faces!!! yous look lurverly. have to laugh at the fact you guys are going to WRONG way round austrailia due to the wind direction, how the eff are you supposed to know that unless your an aussy relic!! anyhoo i have to tell you that the fertility temple we went to amritsar has worked a little to well as i have a bun in the oven as well as cara's 2!!! :-) am all chuffed if not a bit shocked!! but when you guys get back please say you'll come over and visit??? me and my man will have a place by then and theres a clare and tel shaped spot somewhere in there just waiting for you guys to visit!! anyway for now keep on trooping and all my love to you dudes!! xoxoxoxo xoxoxoxoxo