Alice to Mt. Isa

Alice disappeared in the rear view mirror, and we set course north along the Stuart Hwy. It wasn't long before we hit a bit of a roadblock, a giant Wedge Tail Eagle sitting on top of a kangaroo carcass, smack bang in the middle of the road. He defiantly stared us down, leaving it to the last minute, before aloud cry and a whoosh of the wings took him to a nearby tree. The goose bumps are up! It is the most amazing sight.

Aileron Man.

We need a coffee! We cross the Tropic of Capricorn, that signifies moving from  the dry arid parts of Australia, to the more temperate and tropical. Not quite yet. Must be global warming!! First opportunity is the small town of Aileron, with its giant aboriginal warrior standing guard. Quite a sight! The road house is very nice. It is spotlessly clean, and the staff are friendly. The coffee and muffins are good too. A small gallery next door has a statue of his woman and child in the front yard, and the whole thing is well presented.
Back on the highway we pass Ti-Tree and Barrow Creek, and early afternoon reach our overnight stop at Wycliffe Well. Now most of you have probably never heard of Wycliffe Well. But we have been given assurance that it is famous as the UFO capital of Australia.

Says it all!

New arrivals at Wycliffe Well.

The Big4 Caravan Park tries hard. The well still works so the grounds are green, and full of little green men! It is a funny caravan park. All the sites are drive through, and so narrow that you really get to know your neighbour. With the northern caravan migration well and truly underway, it pays to be early, as the park soon fills up. When our neighbour moves in, we have about six feet between us, and no hope of either of us putting out an awning! We took a walk around the property. There is a model railway track, in poor repair and not running at present. There is Lake Wycliffe, left over from the WWII years, when the area was developed to grow fresh vegetables for the armed forces. The lake today is overgrown and full of old tyres. There are lots of statues around the grounds. 

Pick the real Hulk.

Happy Hour is upon us, so it is out with the comfy chairs, and time to get to know Steve & Ally, our neighbours for the night. They are from Adelaide, on their way to Darwin & Kakadu on two weeks holiday. They are green with envy when they learn we are retired and on no time limit. One day!!!The peace is really shattered, when two huge coaches arrive, towing trailers and 100 school kids. The campground goes from busy to bulging and the camp kitchen is over run like ants, as dinner is prepared. It is a reminder that it is NT School Holidays for the next  four weeks.
We are up early because the buses full of kids are up early, and the exodus begins. There is a queue to get out the gate!!

Arriving at the Devil's Marbles.

Just north of Wycliffe Well is the natural phenomenon known as the Devil's Marbles. It is one of the most sacred sites in aboriginal culture. Depending what you read, it is the place that the Rainbow Serpent, the central part of all Dreamtime, laid its eggs. It is not hard to see how this was imagined.

Carolyn & The Devil's Marbles.

We do the walk around the park, and the sights in the early morning sunlight, are quite amazing. The colours in the rocks are stunning. The huge variety of shapes and sizes adds to the spectacle. Some of the rocks have split perfectly in half, looking like man has somehow intervened, but not so.   

Perfectly split rocks.

There is a campground at the Devil's Marbles, and the last  of the overnighters are packing up to leave. The best times to view the Devil's Marbles, is supposedly sunrise and sunset, hence the reason people choose to camp. We take our time, despite the chilly morning, and just wander around taking it all in. You can understand why the aboriginals believe it is such a special place. With that clear blue sky and red rocks, it is a memorable stop.

It isn't long before we arrive at our next overnight stop, Tennant Creek. This is the largest town in this part of the Territory, and as we drive into town we are pleasantly surprised how green it is. There are sprinklers spraying water on all the parklands, and the centre median strip, on the divided road that runs through the centre of town. It is obvious that there is a very large aboriginal population here. In fact, it is almost a case of spot the white man!
We have chosen to stay at the Outback Caravan Park, and it proves quite good. We are getting used to the fact that the caravan parks in Central Australia, are either gravel or dirt. There is little grass, and hopefully there are a few trees. This one is a big park, full of drive through sites. There are no bookings, so it is first in best dressed. Again we are in around lunch time, so we get a reasonable choice. Arrive after 3.00pm and the choice is much reduced, and there is a queue of anything up to ten or twelve caravans waiting to get in! Every night, a local celebrity by the name of Jimmy Hooker, runs a talk around the campfire. It is $5.00 per person, but usually includes some damper and billy tea, some bush poetry and bush tucker. A lot of fun, and every night during the migration season at 7.30pm.

Icon of the Outback.

Sunday is Territory Day. The Northern Territory is the last part of Australia to allow fireworks to be sold, and Territory Day is the occasion. For the last week we have been seeing the signs advertising "Fireworks". Each night we have heard the explosions from those getting in some early practice.
Sunday night, the sky is filled with colour and explosions. The dogs are all going crazy, and the galahs (the feathered ones!) are squawking and flapping in the trees, unable to settle down. It continues late into the night, and it takes a while to get to sleep, as there is one last big bang after another.

Tennant Creek Telegraph Office.

Lake Mary Anne

Tennant Creek is the place where Australia's last great gold rush occurred, so we head up to Battery Hill, where the Tourist Information Centre is to be found. We opt not to do the underground mine tour, but have a look around at all the old exhibits. Just north of town is the Old Telegraph Office. The story of the building of the Overland Telegraph Line in the mid 1870's is quite amazing. It was how Australia was linked to the rest of the world. The line was built from Adelaide to Darwin, then linked under water to Java, and on to Singapore. A series of eleven relay stations were built along the line, and messages were relayed using Morse Code, from one station to the next. The men who built the line, then maintained it and manned the relay stations, lived a hard and lonely life. Their story is a fantastic part of the history of the opening up of this great outback land. Other places of interest, are Lake Mary Anne, a beautiful oasis just north of town, where the locals can picnic and swim. It is quite a surprise to find such a body of water, surrounded by grassy picnic grounds. A little further north is The Pebbles, a smaller relation to the Devil's Marbles, but nowhere near as inspiring.

Road Trains refuelling at Threeways.

Next morning we start north and quickly reach the Threeways, where the Stuart & Barkly Hwys meet. The road house here is a quite famous one, and the bar has become somewhat of a shrine to the truckies that frequent this stop. As we head inside one of the young truckies from a road train parked outside, holds the door open for us. He is obviously well known, and the young lady behind the counter shrieks in delight and announces she has just made a batch of beef stroganoff. She produces a large spoon full, which the truckie announces, is as good as his mum's, and then a huge plate arrives with six slices of toast! Our coffee and Anzac biscuit paled into insignificance!

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A couple of Barkly Homestead Locals.

We take the Barkly Hwy and head east. The head wind is strong, and it is amazing how much it badly effects our fuel consumption. A full tank of 80 litres just gets us to Barkly Homestead. Since leaving Tennant Creek we have travelled just 230 kilometres! Barkly Homestead is another iconic roadhouse. We can't believe we are actually at these places we have only read about until now. The caravan park out the back is surprisingly good, and we set up in a nice drive through site between the palms. The place fills up quickly. You cannot believe how many caravans are on the road up here, at this time of the year. Most are heading up to Darwin or Kakadu or the Kimberley, but a few are heading up to the Gulf country via the Tablelands Hwy which meets the Barkly at the homestead.

Ant nests as far as we can see.

Our site at Barkly Homestead.

We head off early next morning for Mt.Isa. The Barkly table land is cattle country, but judging by the landscape it is more like ant country. There are 1000's of these huge mounds of earth scattered through the low grassy shrub land, that goes as far as the eye can see. The sky is full of birds, small finches that are prolific, and fly in large flocks, and dozens of beautiful hawks, gliding on the wind, looking for breakfast. The wind isn't as strong today, so travel is a little easier. We suddenly arrive in open grass land. It is as if someone has drawn a line and said no more trees allowed! We see more and more cattle, a surprisingly large number of horses, and lots of those big windmills, pumping up the life giving water. We pass Wunora Bore and Sudan Bore, where free camp sites have been established. We always expect the unexpected, but even this amazed us. At Avon Downs, 57 kilometres from the Queensland border, at 10.00am, we get pulled over for a random breath test! They must really have a drinking problem with the 8 people who live out here!!

Rock art near The Pebbles.

We cross the border and pull into the cattle town of Camooweal, population 310. We need fuel, so stop at one of the two service stations in town. We have to either leave our car keys or drivers licence at the counter, before we are allowed to fill up. Talk about the wild west. They reckon they have been getting a lot of drive offs. My mind fills with an image of retirees filling their tanks and making a run for it, towing 3 tonnes of caravan. For God's sake, they'd be caught on foot in 300 metres!! I collected my keys, asked the Irish Backpacker serving behind the counter, if they were all still there, got a puzzled look, and left. Carolyn had spied a sign that proclaimed "real coffee". Now we have become very sceptical about such signs. We went inside, and my doubts were heightened when I couldn't see an espresso machine. The lady assured us it was out the back, so we ordered. When the coffee arrived, I knew we had been listening to a recording of a coffee machine!! Carolyn said maybe we should have ordered cappuccino, but when the next table's cappuccinos arrived they looked like someone had been blowing bubbles in them with a straw!!! Thank God we have our own machine. I could be making a fortune!!


Another 190 kilometres and we will  be at Mt.Isa. Since arriving in Queensland we couldn't help but notice, how the highway is not as well kept. In the NT, they keep about 20 metres on each side of the bitumen, mowed back to see any wild life that may be on the edge of the road. In Queensland, the high grass grows right to the edge of the road, and we got the fright of our life when a wedge tailed eagle flew out of the grass, disturbed from its lunch of kangaroo, and narrowly missed us! Eyes were glued to the road all the way to Mt.Isa.