10/9/21 Finally Going South: Barkly Homestead to Alice Springs

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Sometimes I snore. When I snore, Roger pokes me in the sincere belief that two people with interrupted sleep is better than one.

Last night the fishermen, heading home after a very successful Northern Territory fishing trip, slept in stretchers under the stars not 5m from our tent.  All night long, whenever a fisherman snored, Roger poked me. The quota of interrupted sleep in our tent was way above average this morning while the fishermen, who snored well past the burst of birdsong that heralded first light, appeared to be disgustingly well rested.

Today we finally reached the northernmost point of our travels and started to drift south, which was a good thing because Adelaide is still a long way south (and east) of us.

Well, we didn't quite plan to have a 2500+km detour but what the heck.  It's a nice trip down memory lane and we blame it all on Covid.

 

Just around that corner and the road is south westerly. No more north!

We carefully planned our morning smoko stop for the Devil's Marbles, which we added to our growing list of things we must come back to when we have time to go slower. 

 




Likewise the geographic centre of Australia where we regretted not making a quick stop to savour the position. The tropic of Capricorn was next and although this was far less geographically exciting we chose to memorialize the moment, so here 'tis.

Leaving the tropics.

The Stuart Highway was notable for several things:

1. No toilets at the rest areas. We were spoilt for toilet choice on the Barkley with suitably furnished rest areas every 50-ishkm. Good thing the Stuart Highway is long, isolated, and has lots of trees.

2. Speed limit of 130 km/hour. Nope, couldn't do it. Too much buffeting from the strong side wind, not to mention the fuel economy shock when we looked at the numbers.

3. No road kill. Maybe the NT has trained their kangaroos to wait for traffic to pass. Maybe we just struck a good day. Maybe aliens? I don't know.

4.  An unexpected fruit fly quarantine station at Ti Tree.  Cue us parking just up the road and hurriedly gobbling all our mandarins and kiwi fruit, which thankfully was not so many that we couldn't between us eat them all at once. 

Quick! Stop and eat all our fruit!

We rolled into Alice Springs in time to have a quick look see around town, do a spot of grocery shopping, and settle into the G'day Mate Caravan Park where we were as yet unaware that the lawless nature of the NT would keep us awake at night with a sound track of fireworks (visuals included) and circle work.

Town of Alice Springs with the McDonnell Range always in the background.

Sight seeing at the lookout.

Home for the night: G'day Mate Caravan Park, Alice Springs.



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