Day 11 Alice Springs Area

Note/Disclaimer : As author of this blog dear reader you are only exposed to what could be described as “my side of the story”. In writing I have tried to include what we have been doing and seeing as a family but it really is from me, Cath. For any other versions of today’s story, you will have to ask Keith and the kids yourself. No further discussion shall be entered into save for the following.

Plans have been discussed and made for a long time for this trip and the one really contentious decision we knew we would have to make when we got to Alice Springs is - “do we go up the Tanamai Road or not?” In seeking reassurance that all would be well or not to do this, we got chatting to a gentleman in the information office who had been out to Palm Valley on a road that had just reopened after a considerable amount of rain. He assured us that in our car we would make it just fine. To cut a long story short, the car was mostly fine, the kids were fine, Keith was fine and I was not. The gravel and fun little river crossings soon gave way to seemingly treacherous sand and diabolical rock crawls before we almost buried ourselves in what seemed like quicksand. My extremely competent husband very patiently parked the car safely while I tried to enjoy where we had gotten to which was only 1.6k from the end of the road. We didn’t make it to Palm Valley today, but we did get ourselves to Cycad Gorge which was (in hindsight) very beautiful. We pulled out and managed to get back to the highway very easily, even stopping to enjoy the river crossings and the thunderstorm that was approaching. Here comes Act III? Nah, we managed to drive around it on the gravel. Strange how the Ernest Giles Rd with its sandy river crossing that had bothered me so much 2 days ago and today’s gravel driving seemed like a piece of cake after Palm Valley.

The other highlights of today were visiting Hermannsberg Mission, going to the lookout over Gosses Bluff, swimming in the Glen Helen Gorge (something I have been wanting to do since 1986). Discovering the Ochre pits and finally getting that swim at Ellery Big Hole before the sun went down was a challenge but we managed it. We were very conscious of the decision that we had made before we left Melbourne to not do any outback driving in the dusk or dark, but in breaking that rule (very soundly I might add) we witnessed the West MacDonnell Ranges in all their sunset drenched glory. The storm that was still active in front of us to the east made the drive even more majestic.

We have decided to stay on an extra night here to relax and to spend some more time planning the next phase of the journey as it appears that we are likely to be going to go up the Stuart Hwy and give the Tanamai a miss. We have heard that the road needs repair and there are a couple of interesting things we will be able to see on the highway as opposed to nothing much on the Tanamai. Wuss you say? You betcha.