Dirty

I thought our car and van were dirty until I saw this one this morning. 

We left early as we had an unexpected detour of a few hundred kilometres. The road I was expecting to take was dirt and very dusty and 100km long. We have taken our van on dusty roads before and it got filled with the stuff which we have never got rid of. It comes in through the ventilation holes for the cooking appliances and fridge. You can tape them up but we decided to do the longer route. 

So we had to double back south to go north, a bit annoying but we were cheerful enough. We refilled at Ghan and found the price of diesel had gone up by 24c/ litre since we were there last week ($2.99/l). That’s a big price jump. We weren’t thrilled.

We arrived at Alice Springs after 470 kilometres and found the reservations office was closed just after 3pm. Most caravan parks are open from 2pm until about 6pm for arrivals. We after driving around and asking other campers (who knew nothing) I rang an emergency number. I was told off for coming after 2pm when they close the office. It was about 3.30 by that time. The Finke car and bike races are on and it’s the busiest weekend of the year here ( not that we knew)….you would think they would be open.

Oh well I guess not everything can go smoothly on a long trip and we are here safe and sound. I’m pleased as the place is locked up at night, the town isn’t very safe. 

Another funny thing is we are next to a dog pound with, it sounds like, a gazillion dogs barking. It gets worse…..they also have a lot of roosters. I’m sure they will enjoy waking us up in the morning. 

We haven’t seen Alice Springs yet, I’ll look forward to checking it out over the next few days….tomorrow we are going to the West MacDonnell Ranges for the night then back to Alice for three nights. At least we have phone and internet here. 

On our trip we saw a curlew bird, some raptors, crows, camels in a yard and 3 roadhouses (1 derelict) all in 470k. Lots of low mountain ranges.