West MacDonnell Ranges

…didn’t happen. Sigh. We were all ready to drive out to Glen Helen and see the sites of the mountain range to the west of Alice Springs when I noticed the left indicator wasn’t working on the van. We do a comprehensive pre departure check every day to see everything is working. First stop was the auto shop to get a new connection. The first we purchased and fitted on the roadside by Bob wasn’t very substantial and the next was the female connector, not the male connector as was required. He spent ages fiddling around while I walked into town to visit the tourist information centre and Woolworths. It’s a public holiday here today so we couldn’t get help from an auto electrician or the correct fitting.

We decided to cancel our accommodation that was booked and paid for. You can’t go driving around with no indicator. So here is my blip of the problem part, the main mall in Alice Springs and the Ghan train which just passed by. 

The Ghan is a luxury train which crosses Australia from Darwin to Adelaide. It has the locomotives and 36 carriages. It uses 30,000 litres of diesel per trip. Glad I’m not paying that bill. 

After a sub zero start to the day we had fine sunny warm weather. We are camped back where we started, along with the dogs yapping we have a lot of “Hoons” which is how I describe the people coming back into town after the finish of the Finke Car and motorbike off road races. The more noise the better they seem to think.