Coober Pedy to Alice

Dear Porky,

We are on the road again heading toward Alice. We past thousands of little opal dig outs and increasing numbers of road trains coming from the north, like the Tanami desert with cattle going to slaughter houses. We refuelled in Alice and turned west to Hermansburg an old Lutheran mission station about 130 km away. The station which is now run entirely by the aboriginal community is situated in the Macdonnell Ranges, a magnificent area with endless change of colours, fantastic river gums, spinifex and other interesting shrubs. We stayed overnight at Muellers Creek,a rest area away from the road and watched the sun set with more than 1 bottle of wine, a wonderfully perfumed fire going and not a soul but us ( well maybe dingos who howled early next morning. With a chilly 4 degrees and 0 degrees in Alice we were glad to have our sleeping bags filled with downs. The next morning we approached Ntaria ( formerly Hermansburg) to get the permit to drive the loop track to go further north into the Macdonnell Ranges. We had to wait a while before the shop opened. While we were waiting the shopkeeper and the service attendant (same person) discovered that someone over night broke the lock at the bowser and nicked massive amount of fuel. So there was a bit of commotion for 10 minutes, however we got our permit for $10 and off we went onto the track. After approximately 15km of this dirt road we had to make a decision whether we wanted to carry on for the next 90km, because this road had not seen a grater for decades and the corrugation was so severe HE did not know whether the car would survive this stretch. HE tried different speeds: 60km, 80km and 20km, nothing worked. The rent a cars and Holden Sedans, driven by the locals,flew by with an enormous speed.We decided it was not worth to risk the car, besides HE could not enjoy the view and she thought she is loosing all her fillings in her teeth. After turning around we saw what damage it can do to a car, we saw car parts everywhere on the side of the track. It made us feel good about that decision to turn around. Alice hosted the following night the world biggest Beeny Festival with entries of over 6000 bee entries from all over the world. Unfortunately we missed that, because we decided to press on toward Katherine via Tenant Creek.

I will write soon again, till then

Ciao Petunia

 

 

 

 

 

 

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