Day 19: Alice Springs - Tennant Creek

Two hours out of Alice, a hop, skip and a jump over the Tropic of Capricorn, we passed a hand written road sign:

"Mango Ice Cream, Yum!"

Even if it was only 10:30AM, we thought it would be rude to pass it by. We stopped at Red Centre Farm and picked up some hot mango chilli and, of course, a teeny tub of mango ice cream... yum YUM! It was delicious and so is the chilli. Who said never trust advertising?!

A few km further up the road, we went to the Red Sands Art Gallery where we spent two hours browsing and then trying to pay for the two pieces we chose (there was a problem with the debit card swipe). The gallery is wonderful and definitely the best indigenous art we have seen, I would love to go back one day and buy some more.

Oly was having a nap in the passenger seat when I noticed aliens running towards the road. We had arrived at Wycliffe Well, the UFO capital of Australia. We popped in to have a nose, under the guise of buying a drink. Oly blew our cover as soon as he walked in and said... "so when was the last time you had a UFO here?" the man in all seriousness said the 1st of October was the last time they had extra-terrestrial visitors. Now that was one weird place.

Our intention was to stay at Barrow Creek. Ol took a quick picture inside of the bar and left, we just didn't fancy it. About 10km north of Barrow Creek is where Peter Falconio went missing. It was very quiet for the next 30km.

Our next stop was Karlu Karlu, the Devils Marbles. These formations are over a million years old and were once a solid mass of coarse grained granite caused by molten magma. Over time they have cracked and then eroded to form round and oval balls. There are so many strange rock formations in Australia and these are just as fascinating and awe inspiring as Uluru and Kata Tjuta. We did the short 400m walk around a cluster of them and moved on to Tennant Creek.

And here we are...

Em

Miles: 500km
Time: 8 hours
Location: Click Me!
Temp: 36c
Music:
Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way
Audio book - Artemis Fowl - The Arctic Incident, Eoin Colfer (We like the narrator)