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Published: November 22nd 2008
The first thing we saw on crossing into the Northern Territory on October 9th was the 130 km road signs! NT didn’t have a speed limit at all until fairly recently - not sure why this changed but it is now 130! We thought that might be a bit hard to achieve with our caravan in tow so gave it a miss and stuck to our usual speed of around 90!
Our first night was spent at a 24 hour roadside rest stop - there are lots on the main NT highways as the distances between towns is so great - you can only stay overnight though. Went through Tennant Creek the next morning, Blu narrowly avoided a $500 instant speeding fine for going a few ks over the speed limit through town - they are pretty tough over here - thankfully the friendly NT policeman just wanted to give him a warning! Stopped the night at the Ti Tree Roadhouse en route to Alice Springs -a nice shady spot with lots of peacocks running around the caravan park.
Got into Alice the next morning - both quite tired from the long trip down from Queensland in the heat.
There are big distances to cover in the Northern Territory!. We both felt like we had dry colds - Central Australia is a very dry climate which is also very hard on your skin and hair. So we had a couple of quiet days catching up on chores, and checking out the town. Although our arrival into Alice coincided with the start of the Masters Games, the caravan park was surprisingly quiet. It was in a nice spot overlooking Heavitree Gap, where the highway passes through a gap in the MacDonnell ranges. At sunset, small rock wallabies come down off the ranges into the park to be fed - quite a tourist attraction! We loved Alice Springs - a compact city with lots of interesting history, relaxed lifestyle, easy to get around and set in a wonderful landscape under the rocky MacDonnell ranges. It’s a dry arid landscape and the Todd River rarely has any water in it, but the colours are vibrant, red-brown earth against bright blue sky. And for a small town, there is a surprising number of things to see. We spent about a week there altogether, before and after our trips down to the Uluru/ Kings
Canyon area, and out to West MacDonnells, and it was one of the places on our trip that we found quite hard to say goodbye to!
One of our Alice highlights was a visit to the old Alice Springs Telegraph station, mainly because we had both read and enjoyed the book “The Singing Line”, which is a great account of the history of the overland telegraph line from Adelaide to Darwin. The line was finally completed in 1872 under the supervision of Charles Todd, who named Alice Springs after his wife (ironically she never visited the town!). The old station has been faithfully restored and provides a fascinating insight into the hardships endured by those who worked on the line. The station was also an institution for mixed race Aboriginal children in the 1930s and we were lucky to be hear stories about this first-hand from Alec the ranger, who had lived there as a child.
We visited the small but intriguing Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame which was based at the old town gaol - a two in one exhibition! Spent a morning at the Alice Springs School of the Air, which was fascinating - we watched
a live Year 4/5 Maths class “on air”. The school has about 120 students living across one million square kilometres of Central Australia - a large classroom by any standards! A visit to the old Ghan museum was a bit disappointing as only a few carriages have been restored as yet. But we did see the modern Ghan train come through Heavitree Gap a couple of times on its journey between Adelaide and Darwin.
We were lucky to catch the last day of a really good art exhibition at the Araluen Cultural Centre - Australian landscape paintings from the National Art Gallery. The centre also shows an interesting video on the life of Albert Namatjira, who is probably the best known Aboriginal painter. He is best known for his watercolour Australian outback desert landscapes, a style which inspired the Hermannsburg School of Aboriginal art. Albert was the first Aboriginal person to be granted Australia citizenship - how ironic is that! It seems hard for us to understand how Aboriginal people were not citizens of their own country until the late 1960s. We were disappointed to find that the Namatjira collection had been taken down temporarily so we weren’t able
Alice School of the Air
maths class in progress - on the left is one of the students in town for a visitto see any of his original work.
It was quite interesting just walking around Alice. We felt that the comments we had heard about the local indigenous people from some people we had met on the road were a bit harsh. “They just sit around under the trees all day doing nothing”. We thought this was a sensible thing to do on a hot day! On our last day at Alice before heading north we spent the day at the Alice Springs Desert Park which was fantastic - as you walk around the park you move from one desert environment to another and each area has natural free flight aviaries which Blu especially loved, and great displays of the mammals and reptiles you might see in each environment.
Our trips out of Alice were also memorable. We were able to take the caravan out to Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kings Canyon, as all the roads are sealed. A surprisingly long way south of Alice (450 kms) but worth the journey! We watched the sun go down on Uluru the first night, then we rode our bikes around the base (9km) the next day, with lots of stops for
School of the Air map
the school covers a huge area! photos and to admire the rock. It is fascinating as it looks different from every angle and time of day. Interesting that people still climb the rock despite it being against the wishes of the local people, and so sheer too, but while we were there it was closed anyway due to high winds at the top.
The next day we were up at 5.30am to see the sunrise on Uluru, along with lots of other keen people! We also went on the free guided ranger walk which was great - we learnt heaps about the history of the rock and the stories of the local people who have been coming there since the year dot. That afternoon we drove out to Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), an impressive group of large domed rock formations about 40 minutes drive from Uluru. We did the Valley of the Winds walk through the middle - it was just stunning but pretty hot! And of course, the sunset on the Olgas at the end of the day - magic!
The trip to Kings Canyon is a mere 300k from Uluru, so we set off to check it out the next day. We
did the small Kings Creek walk in the cooler part of the afternoon, then retired to the camp for a swim and to watch the sunset on the canyon from our campsite (yet more sunset photos!) and the dingos roaming around the camp! The next day it was up early again to do the Canyon Rim walk (6 km). It was straight up for the first 750m (reminded us of that nasty bit of the Tongariro Crossing!) but after that it was pretty easy, as it circled the canyon rim at the top. A really spectacular walk, most of which we did in the company of a nice couple from Victoria and about 50 girls from a Melbourne college. It was so funny to see all the shrieking schoolgirls in the waterhole when we came to the Garden of Eden! Reminded us of Picnic at Hanging Rock!
We also did an overnight trip into the West MacDonnell ranges out from Alice and this time we left then caravan behind and took the tent, as part of the trip was on gravel roads and we weren’t sure how corrugated they would be. This was also a very scenic trip and
Alice from Anzac Hill
looking towards Heavitree Gap easy - you just drive out next to the stunning ranges and visit the different gorges en route - Simpsons Gap, Standley Chasm, Serpentine Gorge, Ellery Big Hole and my favourite, Ormiston Gorge. Another hot day and the beer we had at Glen Helen Gorge resort was the best we have tasted in a while! We stayed at the campground at Ormiston Gorge overnight and apart from the flies, it was a great night out under the stars. The next day we took a detour to Palm Valley on a rather exciting 4WD track through red sandstone country. The track followed an old rock riverbed out to a lush green oasis of cabbage tree palms and cycads. The underground water system that feeds this oasis is the same one as Lawn Hill National Park hundreds of kms away in Queensland! On the road back to Alice we called into Hermannsburg, which was a Lutheran mission started in 1877. Albert Namatjira was raised on the mission and the Hermannsburg school of painting began here. It was interesting to walk around the old buildings where the German missionaries lived and worked among the local Aboriginal community.
Couldn’t leave Alice without trying
out a camel steak, but decided we much prefer kangaroo which is leaner and tastier. While we were in Alice, we sold our bikes to a young English couple camped next door, as we decided it would be too hot for biking from now on. This also freed up space in the back of the car and saved Blu the tedious job of taking the front wheels off and on each time we moved.
After Alice, we headed back up north again towards Darwin, stopping the night at the Devil’s Marbles, which has a small unpowered campground. The Marbles are yet another amazing set of rocks, and apparently UFOs have been regularly sited around this area, but we didn’t spot any that night! So onto the Top End - the other part of the Northern Territory - watch this space!
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