Burning Desire For FIRE

Before I left Griffith, I wanted to see The Hermit’s Cave, so I drove up to where the supposedly well-sign-posted track was.

I read about the hermit and his sad life, and I was curious to see where he lived for all those years.

However, I was thwarted. I found the Lookout, which gives a nice view of the city, but the track was one that you had to pick out for yourself, by the looks of things. I was there on my own, so if I injured myself I’d be toast.

The only people nearby were 3 dodgy-looking people in a car near where I parked mine, which also made me nervous. I decided, after walking a little way down the track, to stop when it became steep and tricky to descend. I didn’t want to screw up the Crazy Road Trip now, when I was so close to getting to the final destination before I headed home.

So I walked back to the car, disappointed. Still, maybe one day I’ll come back and try again, this time with a better map.

I found another silo. It seems that the rural communities have absolutely embraced the trend of decorating silos. Everywhere you turn around, there’s one.

Anyway, time to hit the road. This was another driving day to get to the resort at Lake Crackenback – which is probably how my back will feel after 16 days behind the wheel!

Sometimes I stopped to take pictures when I saw something pretty and it was safe to park the car.

I love this one. I stopped, got out and walked back to take this.

I love the one white face staring back at me from the mob. She was intent on monitoring what I was doing. They other cows couldn’t care less.

Google Maps sent me down more back roads.

One shot I didn’t stop for was one of a bull, alone in his paddock. He had the biggest set of testicles I’ve ever seen, but since this is a family-friendly space, I decided to keep driving.

Hay bales were dotted everywhere. Aren’t they pretty, close-up?

So many grasses.

In the afternoon I began to see the mountains I was heading for.

There were also some ominous clouds forming.

As I was driving along, I got stuck behind a ute. This turned out to be fortunate, as out of nowhere a kangaroo bounded out of nowhere onto the road, saw the ute and backtracked as quickly as it arrived, while the ute was braking and weaving.

It was certainly exciting to see, but I’m glad that someone else, presumably more experienced than me, was the one actually avoiding it.

I had lunch in my car, but by Tumbarumba (what a great name!) I needed a pit stop.

This tree was near the public restrooms. I walked over for a closer look.

People leave gnomes here.

From all over the world.

You can see through the smears of dead bugs on the windscreen what the countryside looks like here, in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains.

Apologies for the thumb in the corner. I was so excited that I didn’t realise it was there.

I was driving along, minding my own business when I saw this sign… with the last three names on it.

Have any of you read ‘The Silver Brumby’ books by Elyne Mitchell when you were kids?

It’s a funny thing when reality comes crashing into your imaginative world. I read all of the Silver Brumby books when I was young, even the last few which were all a bit too airy-fairy. The first 4 or 5 were cracking good reads, though!

These names were mentioned all the time, especially the Cascades, where the brumbies used to go in Spring when the grass was plentiful after winter.

I mean, I knew that the books were set up here in the Snowy Mountains. But in my mind, they were still in fiction-land. It gave me such a thrill to see those names.

I stopped the car, as you can see, and walked back to take a photo. To the left of me was a young woman, leaning on a gate. We said hi to each other, then I explained that I was taking a photo of the sign because of the books I’d read when I was a kid.

She laughed, “Looks like it’s turned into a good day for you, then!”

She wasn’t wrong.

There have been bushfires here. It will take a little time for the trees to regenerate, but as long as another fire doesn’t come through here too soon, the bush will go back to normal.

I stopped to take a photo of the sign, but then thought I’d show you what this place sounds like. It was going to rain very shortly, but the cicadas were out in force.

You can even see the smears from the bugs who lost their lives on my windscreen. They were shortly to be washed away by the rain, saving me the trouble of doing it.

See the sign? Also part of the novels.

I was thrilled.

The Pilot!

Thowra climbs up there a few times. It’s the peak sticking up behind the other hill.

Look at this photo! The eerie blurriness of those hills is EXACTLY what it looked like. I was standing there at the Cascades, longing to go for a quick walk and really see it, but the rain was coming.

Time to jump into my trusty Golf and race to the resort.

I drove through a tremendous downpour, which is always fun when you’re driving along the sides of a mountain. I got here unscathed, collected my room key from Reception and walked into my apartment, where I’ll be for the next week.

Look at my balcony. It’s directly over the lake. It reminded me of my Alaskan cruise with our balcony, but with this one the water is close.

So are the ducks. This is going to be a lovely place to rest, recuperate and then explore. After all, the tallest mountain in Australia is here!

This certainly wasn’t a sign I was expecting to see – but good on them for owning it, I suppose!

(For my overseas readers, a ‘bogan’ is like a redneck or a chav.)

I left for Griffith at around 9 AM, after a leisurely breakfast at the local bakery. I selected Griffith as the last night of the Crazy Road Trip because it was dead centre between Bourke and Lake Crackenback, where I was heading for a week’s R & R.

This was a driving day.

It really was.

For some reason, my Google Maps kept sending me off the main highways and onto what I suppose were “shortcuts,” which meant that I was driving on very narrow roads. But I also saw some lovely scenery.

Loads of wildlife, too. I saw all these creatures without a single Liga being in the car!

I also saw a couple of crosses and bunches of flowers, which are never signs of good news when you see them by the side of the road.

On the bright side, I also saw a bright orange parrot, which flashed across the road above me and vanished into the trees to the left. It made me happy. It was so beautiful against the blue sky.

After stopping at a small town for lunch, I turned left when I saw a sign for a lookout.

The view was pretty. You can see that the red roads are still around, even as I drive towards the bottom of the state. I was a little weirded out when two cars suddenly appeared at the top of the lookout. It looked like one was chasing the other. I started to drive down the hill, but pulled over (and locked my doors) to let them go past me.

They were gone within seconds. I have no idea what was going on, but I turned left when I got down to the highway again and kept going on my way to Griffith.

I’d downloaded ‘Ingenue’ and ‘Hymns of the 49th Parallel’ by k d lang, so I was having a singing afternoon.

This was the first day of the road trip when the driving started to pall.

I think it was because, for the first time since I’d left Adelaide, vegetation was crowding the sides of the roads, and there weren’t the magnificent clear views of the horizons that I’d become used to.

By this time, I’d had to slow down for wild life that was wandering all over the roads. The annoying thing about Australian wildlife is how wonderfully camouflaged it is. The very SECOND an animal or reptile gets off the road, it blends so seamlessly into the foliage that there’s no chance to take a photo, no matter how hard you try.

This goat was the only animal I braked for that actually hung around long enough for me to snap his photo. (I’m calling it a ‘him” because of the beard, but it could be a female. People make the same mistake with Scout all the time.)

It was incredibly exciting when an emu ran across the road in front of me. It was huge! It was suddenly there in front of me, running from right to left. It was only later that I realised that if I’d been travelling a few seconds faster, then it wouldn’t have been so wonderful.

Thankfully, my trusty Golf was unharmed.

The good thing about being directed down all the side roads was that there wasn’t as much traffic, so there was more chance to see animals. The best one, after the emu, was a massive lizard basking in the middle of the road as I came over a hill and started barrelling towards it.

He didn’t seem at all grateful to me for slowing down enough to let him get to the side of the road and disappear. He threw me what looked like a filthy look as he stalked away.

By late afternoon I was driving into Griffith, a dull town that exists to grow citrus, wine and, reportedly, marijuana, thanks to the irrigation pumped into it.

It’s very different from the parched Australia that I’ve been driving through!

I grabbed a motel room two doors away from an Aldi, where I went and bought supplies for my week in the timeshare resort at Lake Crackenback. I might be staying in a luxurious resort, but I’m not paying for expensive groceries that I can bring with me!

That night, I received a WhatsApp from Liga. They were home.

“Back to reality!” I quipped. The next morning I woke up to this photo:

Bloody hell! No wonder she loved tropical Cairns so much!

Dad Joke of the Day:

You could’ve knocked me down with a feather!

When people say, “It’s beyond the black stump” they mean that it’s way out beyond the reaches of civilisation. I always thought it was a metaphor.

It turns out that the old-timers were referencing a real thing.

This site marks the original «astro station”
established in 1887 by the Surveyor General.
The stump was used to hold large scientific
equipment that took measurements to establish
latitude and longitude in Blackall with the
fixtures later used to position towns from
Brisbane to Boulia via Roma and Charleville.
This established the positions
of important centres from which
survey work for the colony could
be connected, ensuring accurate
mapping of the entire state.

This is a replica, as the original one was destroyed in a bushfire a hundred years ago, but it stands on the same site.

As a lover of language, I was tickled pink!

I saw a few of these bottle trees by the side of the road.

All of this green by the highway meant that it would be enticing for grazing animals. I had to keep a close watch.

As the day went on, I began to see more and more wild goats.

The red earth is still here, but I’m seeing it less and less.

Consider this photo as a warning!

If you’re ever in Charleville and see this “Historic House” – don’t go into it. It was the biggest waste of $10 I’ve ever spent. The very deaf man at the door told me that it was full of a collection that a man had carefully curated.

It wasn’t.

It was like a Bower Bird in human form had grabbed anything old that they came across and shoved it into this house. At least Bower Birds only take things that are coloured blue. This guy just exhibited everything.

It was a waste of time.

I was doing 110 km/hr down the highway and I doubled back to get this photo. Someone out here has great taste in music.

I saw a sign that pointed to “The Beach”. Here, in the middle of the country??? I swung the wheel and took a look.

It was nothing. But I did get to see these lovely horses.

I was driving along, listening to Art Simone’s podcast ‘Concealed’ when out of nowhere this sign jumped out at me. I jammed on the brakes to take this shot.

Victoria.

South Australia.

The Northern Territory.

Queensland.

And now New South Wales.

Remember when I said that when we left Melbourne my car was at 100,000 km?

It’s now on 105K.

Not bad, hey? I drove just over 1,000 km today and I was tired. One motel wanted to charge me $220 for one night and I told them that I’d rather sleep in my car (though I really hoped that I wuldn’t have to.)

Anyway, right down the road in a dodgy part of town is a pub that let me stay for $75/night. It doesn’t have an ensuite but seeing as I’m the only female staying here who’ll be using the girls’ bathroom, I’m ok with that.

***

The next day, I woke up and it was POURING! Who has ever heard of rain in Bourke? I told a couple of people at the visitors Centre that they’ve clearly been telling lies to the rest of us and they smiled and said, “We’ve been hanging out for this rain.”

I could believe them.

The trouble was, when it rains it makes all of the dust in Bourke turn to mud.

I discovered this when I went to the graveyard to look for Fred Hollows’ grave. I was wearing my new summer sandals. I was jumping from hillock to hillock to try and avoid getting the mud into them.

This graveyard was separated into sections depending on which religion the deceased subscribed to.

I felt sorry for this lone grave, so far from home.

Old graveyards like this one have lots of sad graves. This was a hard place to bring up kids, back in the day.

Sadder still was this grave. There’s no headstone or anything else to mark it except this fence, which is on its way out.

A little lamb with her to keep her company…

After wrestling with Google Maps, I finally realised what it was trying to tell me and I found Fred Hollows’ grave.

What an extraordinary man he was.

The whole site is in the shape of an eye.

There’s a large rock and a sculpture here that the family commissioned.

…

How sad his parents must have been.

This was interesting. It’s a mosque that existed for the Ghan camel herders.

Then I discovered another silo, of course.

“This project was to celebrate the accomplishments of Percy Hobson, a Gnamba man who won the Gold medal for high jump at the Commonwealth Games, Perth in 1962 jumping 2.11m which was the Olympic record at the time, Percy trained himself for this accomplishment by practising to jump in his backyard in Bourke.

Along with the boxer Jeff Dynevor, who won a Bantamweight Gold Medal at the same games, Hobson was the first Indigenous athlete ever to win Commonwealth Gold for Australia.”

It is just outside the main drag.

Then I headed back to the Info Centre to eat lunch and piggyback off their free wifi to get some blogging done. They have some sculptures along the right side of the centre to celebrate the indigenous people.

I think this one was the best.

I stayed most of the afternoon. As time passed, the rain stopped and it got humid.

I went back to the pub, took my wine to the verandah on the first floor overlooking the street and watched as at 6 PM, the stampede began as the pub’s dining room opened and the locals converged.

I ate the first crumbed cutlets I’ve had since childhood – they’re too expensive now! – and crawled into bed. Only a couple more days’ driving to go before the Crazy Roadtrip turns into the Lazy Roadtrip.

Dad Joke of the Day:

The first thing I did when I left the motel was to find Arno’s Wall. It’s behind a pub and is simply a place where a guy called Arno kept putting random things in a wall he was making.

As you do…

He even put the kitchen sink into it!

In a nod to what Winton is really famous for, here is a public bin on top of a dinosaur foot.

A couple of years ago, I went on a Little Adventure to Narracoorte in South Australia, where I saw ancient fossils in the caves. Those were little ones.

Winton is famous for the huge fossilised animals they’ve found here. You know, the ones as big as the Jurassic Park Brontosauruses.

In fact, one of the ones I saw is the biggest animal to ever walk on land.

Honestly, the flies were a little annoying, but I wouldn’t have called them ‘extreme.’

The dinosaur museum is at the top of one of those long, flat mounds that jut out from the flat ground here. This one is about 75 metres high.

The Australian Age of Dinosaurs is very interesting. When I mentioned on Facebook that I was heading to Winton, my ex-sister-in-law Deb said that I mustn’t miss it.

She was correct.

They have a life-sized statue of a meat-eating dinosaur at the front door. They found his bones mixed in with a huge vegetarian dinosaur. Possibly, she was stuck in the mud by the inland sea and as he moved in for the kill, she managed to kill him first. When she died, they both were covered with water and then covered with silt, preserving their bones.

His bones are a lot lighter and smaller than hers. “We think that, if he wasn’t entangled with her, his bones would never have been preserved and we wouldn’t know of his existence,” said one of the guides.

As an aside, “his” and “hers” are guesses. There’s no way to tell the gender from the bones.

The incredible thing about the Winton dinosaurs is that they were found around 5 minutes ago.

In 1999, a local farmer called David Ellot was going about his business on his land when he noticed a massive femur sticking up from the ground. He was used to seeing cattle bones around the place, but this was something else.

Long story short – he knew that the layer of what’s called “Blacksoil” in the area has air pockets in it. He knew from what happened to his fences that it pushes up things that are buried within it.

It turns out that there’s a layer of dinosaur fossils back from when this place was a tropical inland sea. No one had any idea that they were there. And these dinosaurs are far larger than anyone had ever seen in Australia. It was a massively important find.

A few years later, David Elliot realised that unless he opened a museum of some sort, these fossils were probably going to be left to themselves. He opened this place and they have 2 digs a year. They don’t want to do any more than that because they’re harvesting more fossils in those two digs than they can hope to process in years.

There’s a bit of a backlog. Some of these fossils date back to 2011.

Someone asked the guide if there was anything new that they’d found recently.

“As it happens, yes there is”, she said. “We found something that we’re all very excited about, but before we can unveil it to the world it has to undergo peer reviews and testing. It took a full ten years for the news about Chooky to be released.”

Don’t worry. Chooky is coming…

Here I am, touching a 93 million-year-old fossil. As you can see, they ask that you be gentle with them. This comes from a Sauropod that was an adult and was around 18 metres/59 feet long.

Isn’t life wonderful?

Now here’s Chooky! He’s a smallish crocodile who was found to have the remnants of a dinosaur in his stomach. This is the first evidence anywhere in the world of crocodiles preying on dinosaurs.

This is a painting of how this place looked like back then. It’s funny. You see these flat fields and old trees and think that this is how this place would have always looked. Couldn’t be more wrong.

This is a fossilised branch from a tree. It was impossible to get the whole length in, but the tree it came from would have been over 100m tall. It would have towered over the whole hill we were standing on.

Here is one of the volunteers painstakingly scraping away the dirt and stuff from the surface of a fossil.

The next tour I went on was a mix of media and fossils. Here she is standing beside a replica of the meat-eater that I was running from outside.

Here’s how big the Sauropods were. These were 3m tall and had tiny little brains. They didn’t need much brain power – they were vegetarian and were surrounded by jungle vegetation.

Here is a sauropod’s femur next to that of a Brahmin bull.

They have so far found lots of the lower portions of animals. They think that, as happens nowadays with cattle, the elderly animals who are getting weaker walk down to the water to drink, then get stuck in the mud and can’t get loose. Scavengers attack the top parts of them and remove the skin and smaller bones, so only the large leg bones, ribs etc are left to fossilise.

I took many more notes, as it’s all fascinating, but I’ll leave it now. (I’m sitting at the Bourke Tourist Information Centre using their wifi and I’m all by myself. It’s nearly wine o’clock so I want to finish this soon.)

Yet another reminder to drive carefully!

I was on the road, with only one bar on my phone, when Tom32 rang.

He and Sophie have just come back from Adelaide, where they had a long weekend.

“I asked her to marry me, and she said YES!” he said.

I screamed with joy… and then my phone went dead.

ARGH! I wanted to hear the rest of it all. I was in torment! I had to wait a few hours later when I grabbed the Wifi from my motel.

(I learned why my phone is not constantly in touch, even though I’m with Telstra. It turns out that because I’m with Aldi Mobile – which uses the Telstra network – I’m being punished by Telstra. Damn.)

So now I have another daughter! What with Georgia last year, daughters are coming out of the woodwork!

I’m so happy that she said yes. She’s very good for my son and I think they make a great couple.

Yes. Life is wonderful.

Dad Joke of the Day:

Dad Joke of the Day:

There was lots to see on the road between Barkly Homestead and Mt Isa.

Mt Isa is the last time I’ll be driving across Queensland. After this, I’ll be heading down towards the border of NSW and Q’ld, though I won’t be crossing into Victoria until I’m on my way home 2 weeks from now.

Then again, sometimes there was nothing much. Please excuse my thumb in the corner. It was a quick snapshot.)

And then you see something again…

I love the yellow with the blue.

Then, almost before I knew it, I was in the 4th state of the trip.

Well technically, the Northern Territory isn’t really a state, but you get my drift.

Things haven’t changed that much over the border.

I stopped to fuel up here and still couldn’t understand why my phone was still in SOS mode while everyone else’s had internet.

“Are you with Telstra?” was the question everyone kept asking me.

Yes I am. It was really annoying. I was wanting to download another album. Rumours is great, but I was getting a bit sick of it. Still, surely in Mt Isa I’d get reception. Surely?

It was hard to stay annoyed when things like this were constantly whizzing past me.

It looks like someone has tried to ringbark this tree, but it’s just said, “Stuff you!” and continued growing at a different angle.

I love this sign. It’s so … unambiguous.

More green was appearing as I drove along. The hawks were still flying overhead and the aircon was working in the car. All was right with the world, except for no internet.

If Lindsey Buckingham was to tell me to go my own way one more time, I’d deck him.

There were still heart-breakingly long stretches where the views looked like this.

Then, just as Mt Isa came into sight, the bars came back on my phone!

Incidentally, Mt Isa didn’t give me a great first impression. All I could see were big chimneys belching smoke into the air. After the pristine countryside I’d been through, it was a bit jarring.

Still, I found my motel, found wifi and decided to have a cheap and cheerful dinner in my room.

Hmm. It appears the egg shortage isn’t just in Melbourne.

I just had to take a photo of this, to remind myself to watch myself when I’m here.

Any town that’d have this guy as their Federal MP must be a wild and strange place… this guy is certifiable…

Dad Joke of the Day:

After a cup of coffee and a Sad Brecky, I packed the car and was on my way. It was a late start, as this was only a short hop of 307 km to Barkly Homestead. I would have driven longer, but Eve, my ex-truckie fried from the September trip, kept mentioning it like it was a “must-do”, so I booked the smallest cabin they had.

My little friends the termite mounds were back along the sides of the road.

There was also ample evidence of the bushfires they had up here. Sometimes it was only on one side of the highway, but other times it was clear it had jumped it. Not that jumping it would be a huge feat – this major highway right up the middle of Australia only has one lane each way.

It was mid-morning. I looked at the heat gauge on my dash and it was already 37C.

Every now and then I’d see a dressed-up termite mound.

Here’s the view. No wonder people get the urge to put Grandpa’s old shirt to good use on a termite mound! There’s nothing much to see for miles.

I had to stop the car and show you these colours. No filters, no fakery. This is the Outback.

As I was taking that last photo, I looked up and sure enough, there was a hawk floating lazily in the sky. I grew to look for them and I’d lean forward when the car was passing underneath them, so that I could see the patches of white underneath their wings.

The hawks (and sometimes eagles) have learned that if they hang around the highway, a car or truck will hit an animal and they’ll have an easy feed. As we learned in the Bird Show at Healesville Sanctuary, these birds can spot a mouse moving from 2 km away. A dead kangaroo in the middle of the road ?

Too easy.

There have been MANY dead kangaroos by the side of the roads, all in various states of decomposition. In a little car such as my trusty Golf, I’m making sure that I leave a town well after sunrise and I’m safely ensconced in my room when the sun goes down. Twilight, dawn and night are when the wild animals roam. The massive road trains that are here have no cares – they’re big enough to mow anything down and keep right on truckin’.

Made it! This is the last town before I turn right and start edging my way across Queensland for a while.

I tell you what – it’s bloody hot. I’m so glad the aircon in the car broke before I went so I could get it fixed in time. The trip would be absolutely brutal if I didn’t have the respite from the heat.

I had so much time to kill that I decided to find a café and grab a coffee and something to eat while I read my book for a while. I passed by one café but it looked a bit dodgy, so I kept on going. The second one looked like a busy, bustling place.

How could I pass up a slice of purple yam cake? It was delicious.

The main drag of Tennant Creek on a Friday morning. No one was out unless they absolutely had to be. The heat was not mucking around.

I got in the car and kept driving, then a few minutes out of town I saw a sign to Mary Ann Dam. It was less than 2 km and the road was sealed, so you know the rule.

I swung the wheel.

What a fabulous spot. The wind was blowing over the water towards me so there was a cool breeze. There were cockies and other birds squawking and singing in the trees.

I decided that I’d spend an hour here and read my book and just chill.

About 20 minutes before I left, a car load of young guys arrived and they went further down the dam. After a little while, I heard their music start up.

I now have Shaggy and Rayvon’s ‘Angel’ on Mum’s Boppin’ Bangers. It sounded so good as I was reading there.

After a while, I packed up and hit the highway again. And here it is – Threeways.

So called because it’s a T intersection with only 3 ways to go.

I swung a right and then I was heading across Australia towards the border between the Northern Territory and Queensland.

The heat haze of the road was constantly there.

I still had a couple of hundred kilometres to go. A mixture of murders on ‘Casefile’ and belting out bangers from Rumours got me through.

It’s a bit hard to miss Barkly Homestead with these two out the front!

Barkly Homestead was a strange mix of good and bad. When I arrived there was an hour before check-in, so I wandered around the gift shop.

This was a fantastic place! It was full of high quality stuff – not like the normal junk you see at the greasy roadhouses. I bought up big here. I needed a new “going out” bag that could fit my new phone, I bought Christmas presents for the girls, I bought presents for Liga2’s sons and …

I bought Scout a VERY expensive toy that she’ll probably destroy in 5 minutes. But I couldn’t resist the squeaker. I know she’ll be the same.

So yes. If you’re going past, definitely drop in and have a look at the gift shop.

I was finally able to do my laundry! It’s the little things that make all the difference.

I was down to my last outfit, so I was very glad to change a fiver for some coins and get this job done. I sat in the shade and read my book, listening to all of the birdsong around me.

Barkly Station waters its grass, so the birds are drawn here.

It wasn’t just the white and the pink and grey cockies that loved this place. So did the Guinea Fowl. I couldn’t get over the noises they were making.

So what was bad?

1. The food. I ordered a steak sandwich and I had to leave half of it.

2. NO WIFI. This was the second day that I had no internet. I don’t like being cut off from the hive.

3. Green poo. Apparently drinking the bore water does inexpressible things to your bowels. It’s fluorescent, too. Quite a thing to start your day with!

4. The bugs in the room.

When I checked into the room, I saw that there was a can of Mortein provided. I should have paid more attention.

As soon as night fell, I was invaded by these black flying bugs. They were coming in from the ensuite window, which some idiot had helpfully left open, disregarding all the holes in the flyscreen.

Once I’d balanced on the shower base to shut the window as far as I could, I blasted the room with Mortein and left them to it.

In the morning as I was enthroned on the loo, I counted the bodies. Nearly 70 bugs lay there.

Yuck.

Still no internet. Hopefully things get better in Mt Isa!

Dad Joke of the Day:

Our Crazy Road Trip has come to an end!

I was supposed to go with the Ligas when they went to see Uluru at sunrise, but I couldn’t get properly to sleep. My brain was obviously concerned that I had a 9-hour drive the next day, and getting up at 4:30 to see something I’ve already seen 2 months ago was probably pretty silly.

When the alarm went off, I told them where the car keys were and I wished them good luck. “I hope the Rock glows orange for you!” I said from under the covers as they snuck out the door.

It was the right decision. My Apple watch showed that as soon as they left, I fell into a deep sleep for 2 hours. No wonder I felt as fresh as a daisy for the whole day!

Liga sent me these shots of what they saw, so I’d say they had a worthwhile experience! Then it was time to say goodbye.

Liga hugged me and said, “We’re friends for life!”

It’s true. The three of us have travelled for over a week in my little trusty Golf and we’re still friends. The Golf even made it into the photo!

Then I headed off on my own.

I can’t lie. I call myself an “extroverted introvert” and the introvert inside me LOVES solo road trips.

I wasn’t hungry when I left Yulara, so I drove happily for a couple of hundred kilometres before I stopped for Frogdancer’s sad breaky.

I was all alone here. There was a fairly strong wind that made the trees make strange noises. It was a little bit creepy at first, but then I leaned into it and it was fine.

The (sad) breakfast of champions!

Then, around 30 minutes of driving later, I had a decision to make.

Do I turn right to go straight back home the way we came… or do I turn left?

Well, we all know the answer to that! I haven’t renamed this part of the trip as “Frogdancer’s Crazy Road Trip” for nothing. Yes, I turned left and headed towards Alice Springs. I thought I’d probably get there at lunchtime, and there was a fabric shop I particularly wanted to visit.

The colours of this place are beautiful.

I want to make sure that I capture them all in my Central Australia quilt I’ll make (one day.) I remembered seeing an Indigenous quilt shop in the heart of Alice Springs, so once I got there, I filled up the tank and then cruised around until I found it.

I think I bought far more than I need… especially considering that I bought fabric when I was here in September. Oh well! It’ll all get used eventually.

I had a lovely lunch of rice paper rolls, then called Mum and Dad when I was walking back to the car. I headed off again, but I have a new rule this time.

If there’s a turn-off or a historical marker that looks interesting, GO AND LOOK AT IT.

So that’s how I learned I was on the Tropic of Capricorn.

The colours and the sheer expanse of the land are immense, but the sky adds so much. As I drive, the clouds hang, seemingly so low above me, adding sculptural shape to the vista I’m seeing. It changes all the time and I’m loving it.

Evan28 has a new podcast out called ‘Long Play’, which has a guest each time talking about their favourite album. He and the guest go through the tracks together, talking about the music/lyrics/whatever.

The first one I listened to while driving was Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours.’ I remember when this came out. My friend Simone’s older sister bought it and we listened to it in their rumpus room and we LOVED it. But being so young, I had very little idea of all the insane marriages, divorces and affairs that were going on when the album was being made. The boys soon brought me up to speed while I was listening to the pod and it was fascinating.

I haven’t listened to this album in years. Once I finished the pod, I downloaded Rumours from Spotify while I still had internet. This was a fabulous decision. Little did I know, but I was soon going to have two days with no internet, but this meant I still had banging music to sing along to when I was driving.

I texted Evan28 about me downloading it and he replied, “Yay! That’s the aim of the podcast!”

I arrived at the Devil’s Marbles Hotel at around 4 PM. I could’ve gone further to Tennant Creek but I wanted to see the Devil’s Marbles at sunset. I was so glad I did, though I doubted myself when I saw a sign in the hotel: We have no wifi. Don’t even ask. Just talk to your neighbour.”

I haven’t heard much about the Marbles. I assumed that they’d be in a neat pile, just a few of them.

Um… no. There were lots of them and they were scattered over quite a large area. Who knew?

Unlike Uluru, there was hardly anyone else here! Just two other couples, and we were walking around this huge space, so I only ever stumbled across them once. (You’ll see the photo later.)

The sun was heading towards the horizon, but there was still plenty of time to wander around and take photos as the marbles glowed more orange.

I could hear the sounds of animals moving through the undergrowth, but although I stopped and looked, I couldn’t see anything. I obviously needed a Liga with me to make something appear.

The Devil’s Marbles are granite and are formed from erosion. They were all once buried under soil, but over thousands of years the soil has been blown away and the shapes are revealed.

Erosion wears away at these marbles too, as bits of them fall to be ground down into sand. They sit on a huge sheet of granite underneath the ground, so I’d say that this erosion thing is set to continue for thousands more years until the granite is all finally exposed.

The sun sank lower towards the horizon.

Then the magic began to happen.

Moon and sun.

Even rocks get pimples, it seems.

Looking out, with the Marbles behind me and birdsong in the air as night begins to fall. How beautiful is this?

I found one of the French tourists as I walked back to my car.

I stopped the car a couple of times to capture the absolute wonder of what I was seeing.

It was worth the drive, I think!

Only a short hop tomorrow of around 400 Km or so. I need to do some laundry… urgently!

Dad Joke of the Day:

I’ve mentioned before that I have a chronic cough and it’s been pretty good during the trip, thanks to lots of peppermint oil in my water, cough lozenges, chewing gum and medication from the throat specialist. However, when I woke up at 5:30 with a cough, I knew that it wasn’t going to stop happening. There’s a lot of dust involved with sleeping in a cave.

Luckily, I’d gathered my things together the night before, so I grabbed everything – including a book and my reading glasses, naturally – and headed quietly outside.

It was pitch black, but after I’d enjoyed using the amenities block, the sunrise had started. I was too late for spectacular photos, but I got these. In the top shot, I was rapt to see a ‘planetary’ friend.

My alarm was supposed to go off at 7, so for the rest of the time, I sat in the kitchen area and read my book. I have to say, for anyone paying attention to the ‘Camping’ word in this property’s title, Riba’s Underground Camping is a pretty good site. Everything is clean, the kitchen has everything you’d want and the amenities block also has washing machines as well as the usual, and it’s only a short drive from town.

At 7, I went and woke them up. Because there was no ensuite, there’d be no coffee – or so I assumed. But Liga had planned ahead. I don’t remember if I told you that she’d asked me to buy a mini gas bottle for her camping oven? We had our coffee after all.

My morning coffee next to my Antarctica Pee Bottle.

Liga and I sat and chatted and she told me some stories about her army life in Latvia. She was selected to be part of really tough training for what we’d call Army Reserves. She was the only woman out of 20 participants. She’s keeping up with them too, though they’ve learned that it’s wise to wake her with a cup of coffee in the mornings!

Water is such a precious commodity here. The water for the town is brought in from a bore 28 KMs away.

After that, we were on the road again on our last full day together.

Just as we turned onto the Stuart Highway, you wouldn’t credit it. A herd of brumbies was munching grass right up near the road. They couldn’t have gotten any closer unless they were sitting in the car with us! I couldn’t believe it. When I was here in September, all the brumbies we saw were way off the road and hidden amongst trees.

I don’t know what special magic Latvians bring with them, but I’ve never seen so much wildlife in all my days. Fortunate Frogdancer has nothing on these two!

We stopped for a break at an isolated stop and Liga decided she was going to do a bush wee. As soon as she started to disappear among the trees, of course an RV drove in. I’m pretty sure that it wouldn’t have bothered Liga though.

But then she REALLY got her wish, when we stopped for lunch at a very greasy roadhouse.

Like, seriously? Who thinks this is great decor?

“There are many spiders’ webs up there,” said Liga. Some of the bras and hats had dates written on them that went back YEARS.

While I was eating my small bowl of chips – I figured that was a safe thing to buy here – the girls went into the back snooker room to look at the pinball machine. Suddenly, I heard shrieks of fear and they came rushing back in.

“There was a big bug… a cockeroach!” said Liga2, her eyes as big as dinner plates.

“I felt something on my foot and it was on it, trying to eat me,” said Liga, who was unfortunately wearing sandals.

When I finished my chips, I went to investigate. When Liga flipped it off her foot, it landed on its back so it was stuck. Now, I have a small foot, but even so, this thing was LARGE.

We left it there for the staff to find and went back to the car.

I don’t know why this roadhouse has a thing for discarded garments, but here we are.

On we went towards Uluru. Liga took over the driving again and I sat back and relaxed.

As we were coming up to the turnoff towards Yulara (which is the resort beside Uluru) I saw the sign for the roadhouse. Erlunga.

Hang on, wasn’t that the roadhouse we stopped at that had the exact centre of Australia on it? It turns out that yes, yes it does.

I was so pleased that I’d done the trip in September, because otherwise I would never have known about it.

We also looked at the emus and heard their strange low, hollow calls to each other.

“They are very ugly birds,” said Liga. She wasn’t wrong. These ones looked desiccated and strange.

The turn-off to reach Uluru is still nearly 300kms long. On the way is the lookout for Mt Conner, the ‘Fake” Uluru.

“It is such a shame,” said Liga. “This is beautiful rock in its own right – very spectacular – yet no one cares about it.”

And here we are.

Liga2 and I drove out to the Rock on our own after Liga wanted to stay in the room and wash her hair. She was cross because in her booking, she’d asked for 3 beds and the email arrived confirming that… and then once we were here, we were given 2 Queen beds.

Liga2 and I took the 16 km drive to see Uluru and she was delighted.

So was I, though I wasn’t nearly as Instagram-worthy about it!

We drove around for a while, so Liga2 could get her bearings for the next day when they’d be driving on their own, then we went back, found Liga, and the girls swept me off for a delicious dinner as a thank-you for the trip.

Even though I’d cuddled that gorgeous little joey the day before, I still ordered Wallaby Ragu. I regret nothing.

The weather forecast for the next few days was for cloudy skies, with tomorrow morning being the clearest. The plan is to wake up at 4:30 AM to go and see sunrise at the Rock.

Dad Joke of the day: