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Marla - The Last Stop in South Australia baby!
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At Marla in time to watch the sunset over the empty highway, we pulled up by a public toilet block to cook. Whilst washing up we were moved on by the police (!! Obviously nothing better to do out in the sticks...) as there was no camping allowed in this little lay bay. Well we weren't paying to stay at the camp site, so we moved on a few hundred metres down the road, aka the whole length of Marla, to camp within the boundaries of the petrol station, beside all the road trains, which did their best to keep us awake, pulling in at unearthly hours.
The next morning the excitement in the air was tangible - we pulled out of Marla and took the obligatory photo at the sign showing 453 km to go, aka roughly half a day's driving.
The road was again uncannily desolate, until we reached a sign welcoming us to the Northern Territory! This sign was ripe for a climbing and a cheesy picture. Closing in on The Alice...
 
At the first NT town, Kulgera, we refuelled, and between there and Erldunda (the turnoff for Kings Canyon and Uluru), we were flagged down by an Aboriginal man, standing in the middle of the road, with his battered old car by the side of it, bonnet up, and a few of mates wandering out in the bush. With no choice but to stop, or run him over, I stopped and wound the window down. He said he'd been stuck out here for a couple of days, having to camp in the bush, because he'd run out of petrol, but he had a hose, could he please suck some petrol out of our tank? Hmm, well this was a thinker. Why have your bonnet up if you've run out of petrol, I thought. If we'd had a spare canister then yes, we may have considered giving them some... although thinking back through the stories we heard, they may have wanted to drink/sniff it instead of putting it in their vehicle... but we didn't, and no way was this bloke putting some hose in our petrol tank! For starters I didn't really wanna get out, having heard dodgy tales about people being stopped on the highway. After repeated rejections, his persistance wavered and he cowered off, not happy, and we pulled away, quite bemused and thankful that he didn't get nasty with his request. Soon after that, we pulled through Erldunda homestead, complete with petrol station. This confirmed my belief that we were wise in what we did, as I'm sure he could have walked there pretty easily to get some fuel or indeed some help.
Nearly there now...!
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| 63. | Marla - The Last Stop in South Australia baby! - Marla, Australia Aug 31, 2007 (  4 ) |
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