Leaving the East Coast to go outback

  Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia
Monday, June 16, 2008

very long view

After just over one month in Cairns I was getting itchy feet again and it was time to move on. After getting advice from various folk at the hostel we decided our best option was to get a relocation deal on a camper van. Basically involves getting a camper van and returning it to its depot for a lot cheaper than it is to hire one. So we had a luxury two berth camper to relocate from Cairns to Alice Springs in 7 days for $5 a day plus they give you some money towards fuel costs.

Ben and our van

So we had 7 days to drive 2510km to Alice Springs and hopefully to Uluru as well. As I am still embarrassingly without a driving licence at the age of 25, Ben did all the driving, whilst I tried to keep him awake. First we headed South to Townsville then inland into the desert. By the time we got into the outback proper it was beginning to get dark , driving in the dark is not recommended in the outback due to wandering livestock, road trains, kangaroos and drop bears. We pulled off the road into a rest stop where you can camp for the night. There are quite a few of these along the paved roads of the outback, some with facilities and some without but pretty much all free. I guess it is to encourage people to stop and rest. Because people drive such ridiculously long distances in the outback and the roads are very long and very very straight (plus suicidal wildlife) the incidences of single car roll over seams to be pretty high. The road sides are covered with remnants of blown out tires, kangaroo carcasses and burnt out car wrecks, all of which made us pretty cautious about driving excessive distances, we never really drove for more than two hours at a time mainly due to my bladder and or hunger!

Outback

We had also been advised to fill up with fuel at every petrol station just to be sure. My sense of peril was increased as I had just re-read Bill Bryson's 'Down Under' which is full of tales of people getting lost in the outback and having to drink there won urine but dying of dehydration anyway. I was almost definitely overreacting as we were sticking to paved roads and its winter so the usual sweltering temperatures were absent. So after a not so early start we drove on west, the paved road to Alice Springs goes pretty much straight in land from Townsville till you hit the middle of Australia then straight down to Alice on a road that goes in a line from Adelaide to Darwin. Most of these highways are named after explorers who either died or very nearly died trying to establish routes through the outback.
To keep ourselves entertained on the very straight roads we began a tally of dead to alive kangaroos we saw when we got to 27 dead kangaroos to no alive ones in one day I got depressed and stopped counting. I also wrote down all the names of the creeks from the second day until Alice Springs, a copy of this can be found at the end of the blog if you are seriously bored. There really isn't a lot to distract you when in the outback, a lot of very flat land with scrubby bushes stretching for as far as the eye can see. On some days the type of bush would change or some termite mounds or there would be a hilly area to distract us, it was pretty monotonous but beautifully so. Thankfully we had our I-pods to keep our spirits up and I introduced Ben to my rather eclectic music collection. On the second day we drove to Julia Creek a typical outback town with a couple of pubs and a caravan park where we spent the night.

Julia Ck

The next day we drove through Mt Isa, a big town with a huge mine , in Mt Isa there are allegedly 3 men to every women, I wanted to stop and check out this statistic but Ben wasn't so keen. The quantity of road trains increased around Mt Isa.

Mt Isa

video of a road train

Road trains are trucks pulling up to 5 trailers and they tend to sway about a lot and it's a bit scary overtaking them, we ended up overtaking the same one four times in one day. We crossed the border out of Queensland and into the Northern territory where the map gets seriously empty and the speed limit goes up to 130km/hr as does the number of wrecks at the side of the road. The highlight of the day was seeing some live, wild Emus running around. We stopped for the night at the Barkly Homestead Roadhouse where we had a couple of pints and listened to an old boy playing the accordion, most entertaining. We pulled up at the caravan park next to a guy we had met in Cairns who was also driving to Uluru, so we may have been in the middle of vast emptiness but the world is still a small place.
The next morning we actually managed to get an early start and got about 60kms down the road and spotted a load of cars at the side of the road and one upside down in a bush up the verge. As we arrived the two ladies where walking away from the car which had literally just rolled over. They where both miraculously walking away from the crash but the car was a complete wreck and they were incredibly lucky. One of them had a very sore neck so after speaking to Dr Steve of the Royal Flying Doctors Service on someone's satellite phone, we fashioned a neck collar out of a towel and turned the van into an ambulance and drove them both back to the Barkly Homestead roadhouse where there was an airstrip and a real ambulance could get them. So after a cup of tea and a chat to the police who took all our details we got back on the road. So after all the excitement we were a bit shook up and out of sorts when we arrived at Three Ways were the road goes three ways! We turned left and went down the country North. We didn't drive as far as planned that day due to driving an extra 120km plus hanging around.

Devils Marbles

On the road down we stopped at the Devils Marbles which are massive Rainbow Serpents Eggs or massive granite boulders whichever way you want to look at it they are huge and spectacular boulders strewn across the land. Their beauty was only marred by the fly's that want to land in your eyes, ears and mouth the minute you leave the vehicle. We stopped for the night at Wycliffe Well the UFO capital of Australia, the holiday park is bizarre to say the least. With big models of the Hulk and Elvis all over the place, models and paintings of aliens all over the walls, a shrine to King-Kong, a room full of dolls and a train to take you to a man made lake and back really give the place a certain quality.

Curious shrine at Wycliffe Well

The next day we drove to Alice Springs got some petrol and drove on towards Uluru before realising that my maths was wrong and we didn't have enough kilometers to make it. When we hired the van we paid for an extra two days with the idea of getting to Uluru and back to Alice Springs without actually realising its about 500Km there and 500km back. The deal with the van gave us only a certain amount of kilometers and charged a fortune for any extra used, so I did some calculations to figure out if we could make it and I thought we could but on the way to Uluru I thought I should double check my maths and as ever it was wrong so we had to turn around and head back towards Alice.

Outback

Instead of driving all the way back we spent a night in a roadhouse called Stuarts Well and how glad am I that we did not only did we pump into our Canadian friend last seen at Barkly Homestead we saw the amazing Dinky the Singing Dingo! Wow! Basically a wild dingo raised from a pup who likes to get up on the piano when anyone plays it and howls vaguely in key, there are some very strange people and sights in the outback. Dinky is world famous apparently and is even a trivial pursuit question. Check out the video of him on the piano.

video of Dinky

The next day was our last full day and night in the van so we went and parked up in a caravan park in Alice and guess what it was raining, the average rainfall is 298mm a year! It is only me that could turn up to middle of a desert and its raining, not only that but it was bloody freezing! So after wandering around a miserable looking Alice Springs and a night in the rain we handed the van back and booked a tour to Uluru.

So here is the promised list of creeks;
Dead mans Creek, Homestead Ck, Sensible Ck, Alpha Gully, Beta Gully, Suttors Gully, Mundi l Ck, Campaspe River, Granite Ck, Cape River, Tyler Ck, Wire Ck, Betts ck Waringal Ck, Little Emu Ck, Prarie Ck, Skeleton Ck, Jardine Ck, Skull Ck, Station Ck, Scrubby Ck, Walkers Ck, Sloanes Ck, Ladbury Ck, Namoi ck, O'Connell Ck, Chatfield Ck, Nonda Ck, Boundray Ck, Corella Ck, Alick Ck, Spellany Ck, Horse Ck, Eastern Ck, Holy Joe ck, Box ck, Dudley Ck, Fullarton Ck, Cancel Ck, Butcher Ck, Dingo ck, Salmon Gorge ck, Jubilee Ck, Greens ck, Dingo Ck, Gorge Ck, spear Ck, Johnson Ck, King Ck, Inca Ck, Carleton Ck, Whistler Ck, Wooroona Ck, Western Ck, Happy Ck, Blue Bush Ck, Kiama Ck, Shakespeare Ck, Bull Ck, Six Mile Ck, Tenant Ck, Edinburgh Ck, Gilbert Swamp, Milarea Ck, Bohney Ck, Dixon Ck, Hurst Ck, Barrow Ck, Harry Ck, McGrath Ck, 16 mile Ck and Colyer Ck. I would just like to point out that non of these creeks had even a hint of water in them.