The Red Centre

 

We have been in Alice Springs for over two months now and are having a wonderful time. We have seen a few of the sights but Dan has had a lot of work on so we have spent most of our time at the Caravan Park. It's strange to be staying in one place for a while. This is now the longest time we have stayed still since leaving home nearly two years ago.

We are staying at the Big 4 MacDonnell Range Tourist Park. They have given us a fantastic price because we are staying for a while and it is off-peak. The park is great, with 3 pools, a jumping pillow, playground excellent camp kitchen, go carts, basketball court and a bmx track. The staff are great and we have met some fantastic people here.

Camped next to us are our good friends Tonia and Cameron and their kids Jordyn and Riley. We have known Ton and Cam for about 10 years and met through our mums group when Sam and Jordyn were babies. It is fantastic to be spending time with them and we love being on the site next door.

 

 

On the other side of Ton and Cam are our other friends Mark and Amanda, who we met travelling last year. Along with two other families, the Beesons and the Richards, we are having a great time. The kids all get along really well and while they spend hours playing together, we can all sit together and enjoy the company of other travelling parents. We love chatting to the 'grey nomads' but it's so nice to talk to people our own age.

 

Exactly a week after we arrived in Alice Springs, we packed up our camping gear and headed 400kms north, back to Devils Marbles. Dan grew up living next door to Neil, who is currently travelling Outback Australia with his wife and four daughters. We really wanted to catch up with them but they weren't coming as far south as Alice Springs.

We had a great long weekend getting to know Neil's family and the kids all got along beautifully. They spent the time playing on the huge boulders, which made a fantastic backdrop for the movie they all made together.

 

 

The Wycliffe Well roadhouse is famous for documented UFO sightings. It also boasts one of the largest selections of beer in the NT (which may explain some UFO sightings). UFO sightings have been part of Wycliffe Well's folklore since World War II, and the town's reputation for the unexplained attracts all types: even the Royal Australian Air Force has stopped in to investigate.

 

Two model aliens sit out the front of the Wycliffe Well Holiday Park to welcome travellers, and the Park's owner tells that many claim to have seen UFOs zipping around the night sky.

 

 

 

Sam and Will have been accepted into the Alice Spring Steiner School and are loving it. It is a beautiful little school with magical views of the East MacDonnell Ranges. The teachers are lovely and the class sizes are small. The Steiner school has a beautiful learning philosophy and the kids learn a lot through creativity. So the boys are making up for all of the art classes they have missed out on since we have been travelling!

Will has learnt to knit, using knitting needles that he carved and polished himself, Sam is learning to play the recorder and cross stitch and they are both learning so much about the local history. Will can now sing beautifully in  Pitjantjatjara, which is a dialect of the Western Desert language traditionally spoken by the Pitjantjatjara people of Central Australia.

 

 

We followed Ton and Cam on a 400km return trip along the old Stuart Hwy, to Chambers Pillar. The drive took us over 3 hours to get to the sandstone formation. Erosion by wind and rain has left an isolated pillar of 350 million year old sandstone, rising 50 meters above the surrounding plain. It looks spectacular against the barren plains of the Simpson Desert.

 

6 hours on the rough roads to Chambers Pillar, left me with a terrible headache from my bad neck. So a few days later Dan took the boys to Palm Valley while I stayed home and had a spring clean of the caravan. Our friends, Nikki and Matt called into Alice Springs for a few days, and along with Mark and Amanda, they all had a great day out at Palm Valley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zaccy and I flew home to Melbourne to meet my new baby niece, Lucy. It was a short trip home but I got to spend a lot of time with my family and caught up with most of my friends. I am now feeling a bit homesick and would happily end our trip this year and go back to our house. I hope once we get back on the road I will fall in love with travelling again. Being in Alice Springs in summer has been trying, and the caravan suddenly feels very small!