Cloud had moved in from the west overnight as we emerged from the Tvan to another cool morning. Showers are predicted for the Lassiter and Alice Springs regions over the next couple of days. Fortunately we are heading north and, with a bit of luck, away from the showers and into warmer weather.
We hit the road just after 9.00am, passed through The Gap in the MacDonnell Ranges then went in search of cheap fuel down near the Ghan Train platform – a more sensible $1.95 / litre today. It wasn’t long before we rejoined the Stuart Highway and continued our journey north.
A few minutes out of Alice Springs speed signs indicated a 130kph limit. Road trains are speed limited to 110kph though, and most other drivers seem happy to stick to around 110kph while some (not towing) drove faster. There are no overtaking lanes but the road is very straight in most sections, providing enough visibility to pass 3-up road trains with relative ease.
It wasn’t long before we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, confirming we had entered ‘the tropics’ – even though the chill of the morning was still lingering.
About 30 minutes north of Alice Springs we came to the Tanami Track turnoff. We reflected on previous trips and couldn’t remember ever having travelled north beyond this turnoff before. The track is an 890km drive across the Tanami Desert, finishing in the Kimberly region just south of Halls Creek.
The countryside we drove through today was knee deep in grasses and spinifex after torrential rains much earlier in the year. Native wildlife has rarely been sighted on this trip and we put this down to an abundance of feed away from major highways and remote tracks.
The dots on the map are roadhouses, with no significant towns between Alice Springs and Tennant Creek. One such dot was Barrow Creek – it has one of only 4 remaining telegraph stations on the Overland Line between Darwin and Port Augusta. This newly restored station stands near a ubiquitous roadhouse that is surrounded by large 4WDs towing large caravans.
The Barrow Creek telegraph station was constructed in 1872 and acted as a repeater station for the single wire telegraph line that sent and received morse-coded messages between Australia and Great Britain. With the onset of WWII the single strand wire was upgraded to a multi-strand cable capable of voice calls. The station also became a headquarters for linesmen maintaining the line in this remote part of Australia in the late 1930s.
We pulled into the bush campground attached to Karlu Karlu (Devil’s Marbles) National Park and, once set up, followed a walking trail through the unique landscape admiring the strange granite formations. Karlu Karlu is the traditional country for a number of indigenous peoples; the name translates as ’round boulders’. A number of the granite ‘marbles’ that are scattered across the valley are precariously balanced on top of one another, creating little refuges and shelters for an assortment of native plants.
The sun is slowly setting over a nearly full campground. There is smoke in the sky to the east – but far enough away to hopefully pose no threat that may require us to move during the night. If we start smelling smoke we may reconsider our situation!