Day 26 - Alice Springs to Three Ways Roadhouse

Our departure time was the regular 10am-ish. The camper trailer seems to be getting packed away in a more and more unruly fashion. Justin has a sore shoulder, so as I am driving first shift, I asked Justin to look on the camper trailer website for instructions, to find out just how wrong we've been doing it. The landscape was fairly standard all the way up to Tennant Creek. I can't help comparing it to the landscape north of Coober Pedy, where there was nothing growing. Relatively this is lush, full of life.

 

Soon out of Alice the ant hills started. Clearly they cope with the summer heat well, there are so many colonies all the way up to Tennant Creek. We also crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.

 

The first stop was Aileron, where they have these giant sculptures, no one really knows why. They have a wedge tailed eagle in a open topped cage. It is 40 years old apparently, its wings were broken by a car, and he has been in the enclosure ever since.

 

Note the powerful beak. I'm not coming back as a rabbit.

 

At Wycliffe Well we pulled In for a toilet stop, and I have never been so happy to have pulled over. This place is hilarious, also known as the UFO capital of Australia. I took heaps of photos, it was all too funny. Unfortunately there were no cloth badges for sale. Alien images would have spiced up the girls' badge collections.

 

The Devils Marbles are considered a must see in the Northern Territory. I didn't realise the extent of them, and thought they were one pile of balancing rocks. There are plenty of piles of these rocks, I snapped a few of them. Some of them are incredibly round!

Tennant creek was only a petrol stop for us, we failed to find the post office easily to send some postcards. We decided to stay at Threeways Roadhouse rather than push on for another 200+ ks. This place won NT's Roadhouse of the Year in 2008. It seems they haven't cared much for it since. The pool was brown, and we couldn't buy a loaf of bread. Plenty of chocolate for sale though.

 

Posted with Blogsy