North (Marla - Alice)

Day: 8

Distance Travelled: 454kms

Weather: An awesome 25 degrees, sun and light winds

Today's Biggest Challenges: More dead straight roads for hundreds of kms. Sun through the visor made it feel like an oven but the cooler breeze helped in the end

What I’ve learned from today: Definitely worth having the kettle ready for coffee when you need it! Also, good hydration is impossible to overestimate in value.

Highlights of today: Another beautiful outback sunrise greeted us for our journey to the fourth state on this trip (and, incidentally, the eighth and final state/territory I am yet to visit!). Plan was simple: Drive North 450 something kms. So after getting our freshly cleaned clothes off the line from the day before (YAAAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!) and a quick pack we were off.

We planned this day a little bit, looking for rest stops every 100kms or so (started looking around the 80k mark). By the second stop, we were at the NT border! I initially thought I’d missed it as the SA border sign going the other way is more than a km back from the major sign so was a bit confusing. We snapped a few pictures and continued along the journey. The signs now said 130kmph which was AWESOME to experience! Good fun, very fast and we made good time.

We pulled over for fuel at the first roadhouse in the NT and was a fun $1.90p/L at the time. Walked inside to pay and saw a photograph of a fuel pump from nearby, some time ago, with an outrageously high price on it (more than $3.40) with the poor person having to buy more than 200 litres. Check out how much that turned out to be! Incredible.

Eldunda was the next stop and is a roadhouse on the corner of the Lassetter Highway, the turn-off to Uluru. The night before we had made a unanimous decision to switch up the Uluru/Alice days so that we can have a proper rest day in Alice, re-stock, use wifi, etc. before the busy touristy day at Uluru. We stopped for lunch, coffee and souvenirs while sitting in the heat getting roasted. Getting on to 28 degrees and boy can we feel it in the bike gear!

With only two hours to go, Stu swapped out with Kristal as she was getting a bit of a hydration headache, and so we pushed on. The 130kmph helped cool us down a little as we watched buzzards (which I argued looked like eagles but ahh well) having a kangaroo feast on the side of the road and dodged the cyclones created by the triple-trailer road trains.

Our last stop before Alice was the Stuart’s Well roadhouse. Next door was a camel farm so Stu thought it would be a great idea to get up close and personal with one and it got a REAL close whiff of his helmet! Clearly it didn’t taste any good cause he wouldn’t really pose for another photo haha. There were also a few emus about and I took rather an interest in studying their backward knees. Funny things they are. We had also had a look at the Cannonball Memorial nearby, marking the crash site that killed four people in the 1994 Cannonball Run motor race. A dry, windswept place not too far from the Finke River, it’s all that’s left to tell of that day.

The last stretch to Alice was quite easy, and we began to see the beauty of the Northern Territory. It is not quite as flat as many think it is and we had quite a lot of fun snaking between the hills and rivers on the way in. It is really a beautiful area and I for the hundredth time I wished we had more time to explore the area… till next time.

We arrived in Alice with a fair amount of sunlight left and headed for the campsite. With very reasonably priced sites we were on top of the moon (despite the lack of grass) until halfway through set up we were warned of the security problems of the area… a van had been broken into last night. I looked up google reviews for the place and they unfortunately confirmed our concerns… some people had even had their tents unzipped by thieves while they were in them! We all barely slept that night having one or more eyes open to any noises… we were on the lucky side though and survived the night without incident. However, it must be said that the feelings of insecurity did drop its attractiveness as a campsite quite substantially… I don’t think I’ll be going back there. (I would just like to say a note here on the indigenous peoples of the area… I am not from Alice or the central Australian areas and so it was rather a new experience to see so many aborigines roaming the streets, many seemingly aimlessly. I don’t know all the real situations here but they have not always been positive and there is often more that meets the eye in all senses of the phrase. I have a great respect for the indigenous peoples (and I have met some in particular that I hold a great awe and appreciation for) however, there are certainly two sides from what we experienced and in the towns and cities, sadly the experience was not the most positive. It can and has been a real problem in the past and very strict alcohol (in particular) restrictions are in place in many areas of the NT and SA.I hope more can be done in working with the indigenous, helping each other and building rapport in the future).

Day off in Alice to come. We are tired and so happy to have a break! More to come :) Till then, MMG