Devils Marbles to Elliott

18/03/2010

Woke to the sunrise as I wanted to get some more photos, where do those flies come from, they just about knocked me over. No use trying to brush them away as the cheeky little buggers just stay there. It was like a mass exodus just as quickly as everyone come in they all left, we were the last to leave. Got some more great photos and headed off back to Tennant Creek to have a look around. It actually looks like a ghost town no real action unless you are getting fuel and yes it is cheaper than all the other stations in that area. Cut it a bit fine taking on board 161 litres, meaning I only had 19 litres left which when you are using on average 23 litres for every 100 kilometres, I probably only had about 80 kilometres left. I have now spent $1,056 in fuel. Now I have had the air-conditioning fixed, a new UHF antenna, then the Anderson plug replaced and the tail lights for the caravan fixed and then.......

What do you mean the indicators are not working, Patrice is now in a panic. I don't know what black cat I have kicked but I am starting to imagine noises now. For some unknown reason I have no indicators, the hazard lights work which run off the same fuse as the indicators, I have checked all the fuses and still nothing. I will wait until we get to Katherine and will go and see the Toyota dealer. We left Tennant Creek and headed up to the old telegraph buildings 10 klm north of Tennant Creek, it is out of tourist season so it was locked up, if we wanted to drive back to Tennant Creek we could borrow a key to look inside but that means that we would have had a 40 klm round trip and I am not sure of what is inside, so we just looked through the windows and had a wander around. It is

an amazing story of hardship that the early settlers went through to open up this arid land. There were plenty of information signs that gave you a great insight into this time. Back on the road again, we have now travelled nearly 3,000 klm in 11 days, I am looking forward to getting to Jabaru where we will stay a few days and have a break, we have probably overdone the driving but there is very little to see in this area.We intended to only drive around 200klms today but we got to Renner Springs a little after 1.00 and decided to simply stop for lunch and keep going. We met a lovely English couple who are seeing more of Australia then most Australian will ever see, it is embarrassing to hear where they have been and also how excited they are to have seen the things they have seen.

We were given a heads up on a small town called Elliott, so off we go. We arrived in Elliott around 4.00 and there are aboriginals everywhere, the caravan park is like something out of the dark ages but we are tired, there are 4 other vans here so what the heck let's get some rest and head of for Daley Waters in the morning. Trice and I decided to go for a walk and meet the locals, funny thing is that they are very shy and have a lot of difficulty in making eye contact. It is very sad when you have a look around the town, there is an alcohol ban so the pub has been closed and with that most businesses. The young Aussie guy in the shop has come here from Brisbane, has only been here for 2 weeks, his girl friend has just got a teaching job in Elliott so he decided to tag along, all he could do was apologise for everything. As I sit here you can hear tin cans being kicked around with people wandering around aimlessly, they have nothing to do. Quiet night tonight just doing the blog and catch up on some reading.