No connection/service along the Stuart Hwy north up to Tennant Creek from Alice, no connection in Tennant Creek. Heading further North, same story. Optus cellular service only seems to cover the major townships. I’m not expecting service in Mataranka either. The wife’s loving the lack of connection meaning my total attention for her (except when I’m doing this & mucking about with BeatMaker)
Speaking of service I have seen many Telstra service vans however & a few campers seem to be happily chatting on their mobiles, so they’re probably with Telstra, it’s just a pity their charges & customer service suck (at least in the times I’ve been their customer).
Enough of that though, at the moment I’m enjoying a beer at the historic Daly Waters Pub. Very nice it is too! The girls are paddling their toes in the pool next to the pub (I think the waters too cold for them to take the plunge) Daly Waters pub has more character than you could poke a stick at, memorabilia from previous patrons adorn the walls and what must be hundreds of signed bras hang from the top of the bar. We could only drink one beer (a XXXX) at Daly Waters, as we still had to drive 100 or so kilometers to get to Mataranka.
This particular blog post will probably resemble a chronological stream of thought as I add onto the local draft on the iPhone until I get connection to post it, so at the moment I’m at Daly Waters but the next paragraph will be from further north no doubt.
Recalling the last 36 hours brings the smell of dust & the never-ending rolling lines disapearing into the vanishing point on the horizon.
From Alice to Tennant Creek the road stretches in a fairly straight line north. The thing that surprised me about driving in the Territory is the changing landscape and vegetation that makes what would be a pretty dull drive more interesting than you would think…
Stopping for diesel at Wycliffe Well we learnt that it has more UFO sightings that anywhere else in Australia. A bit further on is the Devil’s Marbles, another fascinating example of erosion & time’s effects on geology.
I’m entering text from Mataranka now (after having a nice soak in the warm springs). No kind of Telecommunication service in Mataranka as I suspected, not even a local wireless service to log into. I’ll probably have to post this from Darwin (addendum – which is exactly what I ended up doing)
Mataranka is an Oasis after the long drive of the previous two days, the thermal spring and pools are soothing and if you want a swim of a more refreshing variety you can walk a bit further down the track and swim in the Roper river. I didn’t see one croc but a couple of half submerged log resembled some! At night the night sky is magnificent! You can even clearly make out the dark dust lanes that thread through the Milky Way. Lots of meteors too…
O.K. Now we’ve passed through Katherine (& taken a boat tour of two of the Gorges) and headed further north to Litchfield Park after staying at a Caravan Park literally in a racecourse at Adelaide River. Today we swam at Wangi falls and are about to rest for our last (well, technically 2nd last) night in the Northern Territory. The plane leaves at some ridiculous time early Monday morning & we will be back in Melbourne all too soon, but not before We visit Mindal market & catch up with one of the wife’s friends and perhaps a former colleague who know works in Darwin.
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