Alice Springs

On the 5^th of May we moved on from Kings Canyon to Alice Springs. I have found that my van house batteries have not been performing well. They don’t seem to be holding a charge. With Ross’s multimeter we found that it was only showing 11.2 volts after being on 240 volts for days. So I had checked on battery specialists beforehand to see who I would go to and if they had batteries I wanted. When we arrived we drove straight to Óutback Batteries’. Gary there tested them and we found that they were indeed on the way out. So replaced them on the spot. All done in half an hours. Slick work I thought.

We then went to a caravan park in town. We weren’t very happy there as we had idiots nearby who were permanent residents and a community next door who were yelling and arguing during the night, drunk, no doubt. So on the 7^th we packed up and went to my old favourite van park, ‘The Temple Bar’. It is about 10kms out of town but it was worth it. Quiet, nice people, beautiful views with the range right behind us. These views are right behind our van as you see.

It was great to slow down in Alice and get some maintenance and blogging and shopping done. Jan & Ross went to Palm Valley and did some other things that we had done on the last trip. But we did go out to the West McDonnell Ranges with them because they are fantastic no matter how many times you see them. I won’t show photos of all the gorges we did because I showed them extensively on the last trip. We did a gorge that we did not do last time and that was Serpentine Gorge so will show that. It was amazing.

Linda took a photo of a Sturt Desert Pea plant at Glen Helen Gorge.

On the 12^th we took a drive out to the Ewaninga Rock Carvings. That was so interesting. A fellow camper told us they pre-dated the Aboriginie existence in Australia??

We wound up spending nine nights in Alice. Where we were staying a permanent resident had his girlfriend visit. She was a nice Aboriginal girl called Geraldine. She is a registered artist and did a painting which Linda bought. Cut out the middle man. Money went directly to her. Very cool.