Tennant Creek to Alice Springs

14th June 2013

Today started for myself and Chloe just before sunrise, as I wanted to look around at the best time of the day, it really was beautiful. On waking up, we could tell that we were heading south, as for pretty much the first time on this trip we had to get out the jumpers and beanies as the temperature dropped overnight.

Chloe at Sunrise - Devils Pebbles

Sunrise at Devils Pebbles

 We headed back to the van had breakfast and once again packed down for the next leg of our journey, today we were driving into Alice Springs, which was going to be another long day in the car.

So we left our campsite and our first stop was just up the road at the historical Overland Telegraph Station site, which was really well preserved and had lots of good information for us to truly understand what it would have been like back in the late 1800's, certainly a great feat of engineering and determination.

Overland Telegraph Station at Tennant Creek

We then went to the Battery Hill Gold Mine n Tennant Creek where it was advertised that we could tour the old mine shafts and be guided through what it was like back in the day. Unfortunately when we there we were told that the tour no longer operated, which was disappointing.

So we hit the road again where after about an hour we made another stop at the Devils Marbles. The Devils Marbles are basically rocks that have formed over millions of years of erosion, but the fact that they literally appear out of a flat landscape and seemed to have been stacked on top of one another in all sorts of ways, made it a worthwhile stop. We walked around for a good hour or so and decided it was also a good place to stop for lunch as well.

Our next stop along the way was unplanned and very entertaining. We came across the little town of Wycliffe Well, well when I say town, a roadhouse & caravan park with a total population of 15 people! The reason we stopped there was the signage on the road said it was the UFO capital of Australia and that earthlings were welcome, gotta be worth a laugh we thought and it was!

Greetings from Wycliffe Well 

Seemingly there have been many UFO sitings by the good people of Wycliffe Wells starting back in the early 60's, as the many newspaper clippings on the wall of the roadhouse point out. At the front door, we were also greeted by 2 statues of green aliens complete with space ship and inside was more UFO paraphernalia than you could poke a stick at. So after spending a shite load of money on very quirky souvenirs, we hit the road again giggling our heads off for the next 20kms or so.

The girls making friends

Our only other stop before reaching Alice Springs was about 30kms out of town, where we once again crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, which was pretty cool.

The Tropic of Capricorn NT

After which we made our way into Alice Springs. As we were coming into town, we slowed to get a photo of the town sign (we couldn't stop due to traffic) and you wouldn't believe it, that when Rach took the shot there was a bloke jogging past and he landed smack bang in the middle of the photo, talk about timing.

Welcome to Alice Springs

We made our way to the caravan park, checked in, set up camp and cooked dinner. We also dived for the winter clothes as the temperature had plummeted, compared to I what we had been experiencing only a couple of days before and we are certainly feeling it!

Our first night in Alice Springs