The first day, Camooweal was really the only town we drove through, about 188km out of Mt Isa. We stopped at a rest area here for morning tea. A few kms down the road we passed into the NT. We stopped for a photo. Another 66km further along was a locality called Avon Downs Police Station – and that’s all it was – a police station opposite a rest area. The police were doing random breath testing – it seemed an odd place to be doing that – and at about 11.30am. We then went through a couple more small localities over the next 200km, including Soudan and Barkly Homestead. It was all quite flat and sparse dessert landscape. We stopped at Barkly Homestead to fill up with petrol and have some afternoon tea (after having premade sandwiches in the car for lunch). We sat on a grassy area near the service station and watched the bull that was calmly grazing there nearby! We then did another 100kms to an overnight rest area where we had decided to try our first ‘free camping’ night. We pulled in about 4.30pm and there were already about 10 other camping vehicles there – it wasn’t going to be a nice secluded night under the stars! But it was friendly – a group of grey nomads were sitting all together having afternoon drinks and gave us a wave as we pulled up.
The kids all really enjoyed this night of free camping – mainly because we let them make a fire after dinner and roast marshmallows. Sam is so used to doing the fires at home in our fireplace that he mostly got it going all by himself. Before dinner the kids had been playing in the red dirt – I decided it was going to be a futile exercise to try to keep them clean – so had a bucket of warm soapy water ready for them to have a sponge down before dinner and then again after the fire, before going to bed.
The 2nd day we got going just after 8.30 and travelled the last 100 or so kms of the Barkly Hwy to the Three Ways, which is what they call the T junction where the Barkly Hwy going east- west meets the Stuart going north-south. We turned left to go south and about 10km later we were in Tennant Creek. This was one of the stops on the Overland Telegraph and there were a few things to do and see there, but at this stage we just passed straight through. About 100kms past Tennant Creek, we came to the sign indicating the loop road to the Devil’s Marbles conservation reserve. Since it was a loop road and not a side road, we decided we would take that road and break the journey a bit with a stop to view this amazing geological feature. We came up to the first carpark area and Sam’s first comments were “Yay, somewhere to climb”! I wasn’t sure at first if there were any restrictions on climbing (both from a safety point of view and an aboriginal culture point of view). But there were no signs and then some other tourists came along and started climbing. We walked along a track for about 100m and climbed up a large rock to view the reserve from this lookout – just an amazing feast for the eyes. We climbed back down and took some photos of everyone ‘holding up’ the ‘marbles’ perched on other rocks. The kids had a climb for a while and then we drove a little further along the loop road to another carpark area which there were some informative signs about the landscape. We stopped here for another 10-15mins and then had some lunch before continuing our journey. We drove through Wauchope, Wycliffe Well and Barrow Creek, all fairly small localities. Then we reached Ti-Tree where we decided to stop at a playground for the kids to stretch their legs and have some afternoon tea. The local school seemed to be right next door to the park with the playground and while were there, the bell rang for the end of school. A group of aboriginal children then arrived at the playground just as we were herding our children back in the car. We said hello and they were very keen for a chat and to drink the rest of the water we had in our big water bottle I was carrying. After Ti-Tree, I did the driving for the remaining 200km to Alice Springs. Michael liked to do the majority of the driving with the caravan on the back, but since this road was almost dead straight most of the time, I said I would give him a break and do some driving. He was still nervous for the first few minutes but eventually seemed to relax back and do some reading on his iPad. It was fairly easy driving and for part of it, we continued to listen to more of ‘The Sugar Creek Gang’. We all enjoyed this (except perhaps Bethy who it was probably a bit old for – but she was happy listening to her stories or videos on her iPad). As we approached Alice Springs, the landscape became a bit more hilly. I didn’t know about AS being surrounded by the McDonnell Ranges and so was quite taken by surprise at the beauty as we drove into the town. It was about 5.30 as we were driving in from the north and so the colours of the mountains and valleys all around were beautiful. It was a good first impression of the place.
We found the caravan park we had rung ahead and booked into – Stuart Caravan Park. Some of the kids would have liked to go to the BIG 4 one, but it was quite a bit more expensive. Yes it had a jumping pillow, but this other one did have a playground and a pool. Because we were arriving at dinner time and there were no more frozen meals, we decided to order pizza tonight. So we got to our van site and set up the basics and made a phone call to order pizza, then Michael went to pick it up (just a 5 min drive to the city area). The girls had a quick shower after dinner and then off to bed. Michael and I looked up a few things we could do the next day and then went to bed also.
It had been about 1200kms of driving over the 2 days. We were ready to stop for a few days again.