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Katherine to Alice
On 7 May we picked up our hire car and drove south from Darwin on the A1 bound for Alice Springs, 1479 kms. It's quite daunting to see a sign post with 4 figures! We stopped at Adelaide River War Cemetery and saw the graves of some of the people killed during the bombings of Darwin during WWII. We then spent the afternoon sailing in Katherine Gorge - two of the gorges. The views are spectacular and the camera doesn't really capture the scale of the gorges. The Nitmiluk National Park Is currently managed by the Jaowyn People. It is estimated that the formation of the gorges took 23 million years through the heavy downpour of water through small cracks on the earth's surface. We spent the night in Katherine and had the most enormous Chinese meal at the local restaurant! the next day we continued south, stopping at Mataranka Bitter springs (Korran) for a swim. It's a natural hot spring pool which is between 32 - 34 deg ! Amazingly warm and clear. We also stopped at Rainbow Hot Water Springs which is part of a campsite but had been sanitised and looked more like a
swimming pool which was disappointing. Glad we swam in the first one. Drove south again along the Stuart Highway and stopped at Attack Creek memorial which is a memorial to the explorer John McDouall Stuart. The creek is the point where Stuart turned back from his1860 expedition to cross the continent, after an encounter with hostile Warumungu Aboriginal people. In 1862 he became the first man to successfully cross Australia from south to north and make it back alive.
Further along the highway is a Memorial to the Rev Flynn who set up the Royal Flying Doctors to bring radio, medicine and education to remote areas. We stopped at the Devils Pebbles (Kunjarra) which are sacred to indigenous women and Devil Marbles (Karlu Karlu), which means round boulders.
After spending the night at Wauchope Hotel we continued our journey to Alice. We stopped at Barrow Creek Hotel for coffee which is an oddball Roadhouse with grafitti on the walls and snakes preserved in jars. Tom thought it was a great place but I couldn't wait to move on. It was only afterwards we realised this is where Peter Falconio went missing in 2001!! It currently has a population
of 7. We next stopped at a memorial to C Palmer, who was responsible for setting up the overland Telegraph. We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and stopped at a marker at the Highest point between Darwin and Adelaide before finally arriving in Alice Springs. We spent the night at Chifley Alice Springs Resort and ate in the Barra on Todd, which is its restaurant. Excellent food - I had hot avocado and prawn followed by Grilled Barramundi on risotto and Tom had Kangaroo fillet followed by Whole Thai Barra, Yummy!! The next day, 11 May we set off from Alice to Uluru for our next adventure!
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