Alice Springs to Queensland

Our first day in Alice Springs was a casual day with a walk around the CBD and a visit to Anzac Hill—a lookout over the City. 

The car got a wash and all electrical things were recharged as appropriate.

Many more rocks were on view as we headed East.  Alice Springs has the East MacDonnell Ranges to the east and the West MacDonnell Ranges to the west.  So today we visited the East MacDonnell Ranges.

Our first stop was Emily Gap, then Jessie Gap, then Corroboree Rock where we had morning tea.  Again the scenery was spectacular and varied, with Jessie Gap providing some aboriginal rock paintings.  Many creek and river beds cross the terrain, making you wonder what it all looks like after substantial rain.
We moved onto Trephine Gorge where the first photo was of a magnificent ghost gum, estimated to be 300 years old. 

Trephina Gorge then provided plenty of photo opportunities and a pleasant 50 minute walk.  It was a great spot to break up a cooked chicken and make chicken rolls for lunch.

As usual I will let the pictures the story.

Friday 14 June had us heading West.  There were two items on the agenda, Hermannsburg and Palm Valley, both being extreme contrasts.  Just out of Alice Springs we stopped to admire the grave stone of the Rev. John Flynn (1880-1951) famous for his work in the Australian interior.

Our second stop, Hermannsburg is an aboriginal community, about 125 km east of Alice Springs. It was established by the (German) Lutheran church in the late 19th century—to bring Christianity to the indigenous heathen community (their words—not mine). It is probably fair to say that they had mixed results, too varied to describe here. Today Hermannsburg is preserved for visitors to get an appreciation as to why it was established and some of the hardships the missionaries endured. Their most well known resident was Albert Namatjira. Albert was famous for his paintings, but he was skilled in a number of other areas as well. Very clever man.

Hermannsburg

After Hermannsburg we moved on a further 21 km to Palm Valley.  The entire 21 km was a dirt road and took nearly 90 minutes to negotiate.  Some of it was so rough that I walked in front of the Darryl-driven 4WD to guide Darryl on the best path through the rocky parts.
Darryl and I loved it—the women were not so sure.

Palm Valley

Palm Valley proved to be well worth the drive with lots more scenery, rocks and the extremely rare red cabbage palm. 

Needless to day the drive out took a similar amount of time.


On Saturday we had a rest day with some shopping in the morning and all of us going different directions in the afternoon, with the two (female) gamblers going to the casino.  I visited Bunnings, which is due to open next Saturday, and filled the back of the car with fire wood for upcoming campfires—courtesy of wooden crates that Bunnings did not need anymore.  While there I chatted to some contractors who were working on the construction—they were from Ballarat (a long way from Alice Springs).

The Sabbath had Shirley and I heading back to the West MacDonnell Ranges while Darryl and Kay said goodbye to Alice Springs and headed north.  We first drove 135 km to Glen Helen Gorge which provided a quick photo shoot (see below). 


Ormiston Gorge (above & below)

We then headed back a few km to Ormiston Gorge which provided a 90 minute walk and heaps of photo opportunities. 

It was a lovely place to visit.  The well displayed and constructed path and guiding arrows eventually evaporated with each walker needing to find their own path back along the creek bed.  Presumably the creek bed path changes after each heavy rain or flood. 



The photo of me below is just to prove that Shirley can use my camera.

We then moved on to the Ochre Pits which has provided makeup for aboriginal “Dreamtime” ceremonies over many centuries.  The range of colours was amazing—much wider than that provided by my beautician.  One wonders how a “face painting” business would go at that location, but I suspect the $5000 for removing ochre would be a deterrent.

Ochre Pits

Our next location was the Ellery Creek Bighole, surprisingly called that because it identified a 16 metre deep hole on the Ellery Creek. 

This was also a picturesque location with many photo opportunities.  One of them was a local feathered fisherman ("Little Pied Cormorant") who was drying himself in the sun. 

There were signs that the water was so cold it could be harmful—but we saw a guy in bathers with towel heading that way.

The famous Stanley Chasm was the next stop (right), then finally to Simpsons Gap.  We arrived back at the caravan after around 310 km for the day.

On day 29 we checked out of the Alice Springs caravan park and visited an auto-electrician to get a 12 volt outlet in the caravan—to recharge the mobile phones and the computer.

We departed Alice Springs at 9:40 for pastures north.  A short while later we passed the above statue to indicate that we had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn and entered the tropics.
 

Some time later we stopped and checked out the Barrow Creek hotel—one of those famous Aussie pubs that have to be seen to be believed.
 

 Around 400 km north and 5 hours later we arrived at the “Devils Marbles”, now called Karlu Karlu. It had been a good trip that was punctuated by some excellent photo opportunities, such as:

-  The sight a a group of wedge tail eagles, feasting on a road-kill-cow.  They were magnificent creatures.
-  The many and various mirages that appeared ahead on the road, that illustrate how long and flat the roads are.

Now is a good time to talk about a couple of the signs that you see regularly in the outback.

Firstly, the “FLOODWAY” sign.  As the majority of the outback is fairly flat significant rains are forced to travel along any path they can find.  So a small dip in the land may become a creek or a river when it rains.  That dip may cross a road so the dip warrants a “FLOODWAY” sign.  The deeper “dips” have posts to indicate the depth of the water.

Secondly, the “GRID” sign.  Many of the sheep and cattle stations exist on both sides of roads, allowing stock to wander from one side to another—at their peril (but that is another story).  Most station owners have fences between properties/stations.  To prevent stock using the road to move from one station to another a grid is installed across the road.  This is like a one metre deep rectangular pool that has railway tracks every 150 mm (approx) that run the width of the road.  Stock cannot cross the grid, due to the risk of falling into the gap between the railway tracks.

Some ingenious cove has come up with the idea to paint lines across the sealed road instead of digging a hole and installing railway tracks (paint is a much cheaper option I would think).  One wonders if stock are mislead by the painted lines or just read the “GRID” sign and wander away.

Now a free plug.  Any of you caravaneers out there who like to stop for a coffee on the side of the road or maybe stop overnight at the zillions of free camp sites, make sure you leave home with a copy of “CAMPS 7”.  Surprisingly the “7” comes from the fact that it is the 7th edition.  It is a brilliant book and has excellent maps of Australia.  Do not rely on CAMPS 5 or CAMPS 6 as sites constantly change.

Now let me get back to the Devils Marbles. 

We built another excellent fire and christened our new jaffle irons for dinner, with some fire cooked damper.  A glass of red was also required and enjoyed.

These few photos show the scenery around the camp.

We departed the Devils Marbles and headed into Tennant Creek—not really a town that impresses.  Still they sold good diesel and fresh bread.  So on we moved.

We turned east at “Three Ways” and headed up into an area known as the “Barkly Tablelands”.  The head winds are so consistent and so strong in this part of the world that there are road signs warning about reduced fuel consumption.

A feature of this road is that there are “few features”, as shown by the photo of the three cattle road trains.  How would you like to be driving the third train on a dirt road?

Our day finished with the dusk that you rarely see—a major silhouette and wonderful colours above the dark outline.

Wednesday saw us heading towards Mt Isa.  We passed the Queensland border and were soon in Camooweal.  As Camooweal is said to be a suburb of Mt Isa it has the longest main street in the world—a mere 188 km.

After stopping for an ice cream we camped 90 km out of Mt Isa.  Darryl and I (again) built another great camp fire and we witnessed another lovely sunset.

After a beer and a red (or two) Darryl found a bottle of Muscat.

It was a pleasant evening around the camp fire.
So far we have:

• Covered a tick over 6000 km
• Been away for 32 nights
• Free camped 12 of those nights
• Had about 12 camp fires
• Taken 781 photos.

 

This is the end of this posting.  Stay tuned for future updates to the blog.  There is a map on the blog that shows what path we have taken to date.