Mt Isa QLD, Tennant Creek to Alice NT (June - 4 days)

From Lawn Hill we were headed for Mt Isa when our most unfortunate turn of events occurred….You know the details…. Everybody fine in body, shaken in spirit, but overwhelmed by God’s goodness in sparing us from injury or worse. Van totalled and beyond repair. Car damaged, but driveable. With the help of some extremely kind fellow travellers Tim got the van to a towable state and we limped it through a slow 250kms to Mt Isa, collecting an obscene amount of red dirt along the way (through our now unsealed van walls etc).

We saw very little of Mt Isa sadly, as we were in recovery mode, staying in a motel and doing our best to resurrect our goods from the van, have it assessed, planning the way forward etc. The children were fantastic through this whole ordeal, helping out when asked and for the remainder occupying themselves beautifully with what they had. They really pulled together for one another at this time. Reflecting on it they squabbled very little through these first few days after the accident, probably sensing their need to keep the sibling peace.

With the purchase of a trailer and the news that we would be paid out for our poor van, the journey continued across the outback, south to Tennant Creek and now we are here in Alice Springs (a massive 1,200km’s across 2 days!!). The landscape was pretty monotonus on these days and petrol hit a $2.10/lt high at the Barkly Roadhouse. Here we are all delighting in our reunion with Tim’s parents, are still dusting ourselves and everything off and are now awaiting the arrival of our new van from Sydney… Kate’s parents have very generously assisted in helping to get the van to us, with next to no notice. (Towing the new van hundreds of kms!).

We have been still staying in motels (shifting our gear from one to the next). The last few days we have been very fortunate to be staying in a two bedroom unit that Tim’s company has in Alice for its out-of-town workers. The space has been so welcome (and the Jason recliners, washing machine, bath etc haven’t been bad either!).

So far the red centre of the country has been very unique. Extremely dry, red, rocky and rather interesting. None of us have lived alongside so many Aboriginals before, and are quite fascinated by their culture and communities. We attended the annual ‘Beanie Festival’ with displays of a vast array of beanies of all sorts, handmade by locals and from around the world. Live music and community celebration gave us a bit more of a feel of this town. It was really quite fun! We have visited the Olive Pink Botanical Gardens and enjoyed great coffees there. The kids have handled snakes and lizards at the reptile centre. It has been wonderful catching up with some old friends from Sydney days who now live in Alice with their three little children. We enjoyed a fabulous barbeque dinner at Rainbow Valley (1hr, 15min) south of Alice, watching an incredible sunset on the rainbow escarpment. The star gazing was the best yet….with the Milky Way clearly evident.

Tonight we have just finally got the kids into bed (9.15pm) after much excitement watching fireworks from every window. It is Territory Day in N.T. and residents are free to buy and set off their own fireworks. We were treated to a fabulous spectacle with huge fireworks very close. At one point we had to hurry the kids under cover as firework shrapnel was falling onto the patio. The event bought back childhood memories for Tim and I and it was certainly a real highlight for the kids.

Off To Uluru in the new van in a couple of days….Yippee!!