Uluru to Timber Creek

I haven't written for a week. We have had no reception mostly, other times there just hasn't been the spare hour to write. My life is so complicated.
Where I left you last time was at Uluru, now that was a rock. Girls, no diamond can compare. It's so awesome it's not 'a rock' it's 'THE rock'
By the way, I forgot to mention that little JG bumped his nose on the rock, he's all better now.

Yes, we do get quite a few odd looks from people, it's not every day you see two adults and a toy giraffe going walkabout.
Anyway.........
We left Uluru behind early in the morning and headed for Tennent Creek, Northern Territory. We dropped off for a quick visit to the Alice. I found it surprisingly clean. Why was I surprised? Dunno really, I guess there is so much dust around I expected Alice Springs to be red and dusty too.
I meet a lovely Aboriginal lady in a park. She asked " You wanna take picha of me  lady?" "That would be lovely" I replied "Ten dolla" I was told. I looked at Martin and he is giving me that look. You know the look right? The one that says "walk away,....... don't look back ....... don't get suckered in, she'll only spend it on grog............just keep moving" (it was a long look) so I didn't get the picture but I really, really wanted to give her that ten dolla.


We didn't quite make it to Tennet Creek, spent too long chatting to the locals at Alice I guess but I was glad because we managed to camp overnight at the Devil's Marbles.

 Now, I don't want to be around when the devil decides to play with his marbles because they are big and there are lots of them. Hundreds of them. What a sight. We arrived in late afternoon which we are discovering is the best time of the day for photographers.

 The lighting is amazing, everything is washed with a yellow/orange colour and instantly all around you takes on a serenity.

 How's the serenity?..............

 (I've been waiting ages to say that)

I didn't get much time to take shots because it gets dark at 6.30 on the dot and we wanted to settle in and have dinner.

We were just sitting down to eat when a dingo came into camp to see what he could score from us. He sat quietly watching us eat about 10 feet away and it was so so tempting to throw him a bone but we obey the rules.

 It was lovely having him there, kind of made us feel at home with Mouss and Josie watching and waiting for us to feed them.

We were in bed, fast asleep by 10pm.
By midnight we were both wide awake and felt like we has slept for 8 hours. (this feeling wore off very quickly)
So I say "why don't we just get going?" I know, I know, rocks in the head.
And Martin replies "Let's go then."
And off we went.........
Now, I have heard stories about people experiencing hallucinations while driving the Nullabor. No one told me you can have them on the Stuart Highway. In the middle of the night after 2 hours sleep I was seeing kangaroos, rocks, brickwalls and water on the road. All of which were not there. I decided to keep these visions to myself because I think Martin was battling visions of his own, like talking on the C.B. to no-one. He will deny this but honestly, that is what he was doing. Unless is was just another of my hallucinations.
 When finally I saw 2 men in a telephone box 200 klms from the nearest town I asked if we could please stop and get some sleep.

So after a further 3 hours sleep we were tippy toppy and ready to go. Is a good drive down the Stuart Highway but as boring as watching grass grow. Then out of the blue we come across a little something ...... it's not a town, it just a caravan park really, called Wycliffe. It may be small but Wycliffe is the UFO centre of Australia! Why you ask? Because they say so. They had cartoony pictures everywhere to prove it.

The musuem wasn't open so we missed out on all the good info but Mart and JG got right into the spirit of the place.

At some point we entered the Tropic of Capricorn and it warmed up. Seriously.

So now we are leaving the Stuart Highway and straight way Martin pulls over and we both got changed into shorts. Yes, on the highway. Yes, in the middle of the day. I decided, in the middle of one of my hallucinations, that the Stuart Highway is air conditioned. The whole thing. Just the perfect temperature for travelling.  Now we are one the Buchanan Highway. What clown named it a highway? I wouldn't even call it a road. It's a long, dirty track. And we did the length of it. The people up north look upon us with awe and wonder that we did the whole length. But you tell me why you would want to travel on a sealed highway when you can travel on a dusty, rocky, bumpy, cow infested track that is 200 klms shorter but takes you three hours longer?

We went over one cattle grid at about 3000kph and got airborn. We were flying! My head hit the roof and my sunglasses flew off. Yeeeeeehaaaaaaa!!

I put my seatbelt on after that.

We did see animals

We saw cows

And more cows

And a kagaroo

And several Wedge Tailed Eagles.

This one was enjoying his tucker in the middle of the road

And there were some wonderful views and sights

It was a hard drive for Martin but we enjoyed it.

The last car that attempted the Buchanan Highway.

While travelling long distances you are able to spend quite a large amount of time thinking. Thinking about things that you don't ever get time to think about. Real, indepth thinking.

While travelling along this day I started thinking about eyelids. Do you realize that you blink so fast that it doesn't impede your vision? Have you ever thought about that? Well I have.

 From there I went onto eye strain. Martin and I are both suffering from burning red eyes and at first I thought it to be eye strain. Strain from what? Looking? OK, we are travelling hours and hours every day watching the road and the scenery so maybe you could have eye strain but what do we do any other day? Look right? If we have our eyes open they are looking. So why don't we get eye strain every day?

I'm just saying............

By the way, I decided that it wasn't eye strain. It was frost bite from that cold morning when the water froze. You can get frost bitten eyeballs right?

The end.

New stories coming up very soon