Stuart's Well to Alice Springs
87.3 kms
Up = 330m - Down = 246m - Highest Point = 634m
STUARTS WELL TO ALICE SPRINGS - 1st SEPTEMBER 2017
87.3 kms It’s a pretty dusty place at Stuarts Well – well they say they haven’t had rain since January so I guess that is why!! The outside appearance doesn’t give credit to the interesting place that it is inside. Anyway – another day today and time to get to Alice Springs. 92 kms planned for today – which turned out to be only 87 as our Big4 MacDonell Ranges camp site is on the southern end of town. Oh well – that’s going to make our day out of here longer! Today’s ride went pretty well, and fortunately although tired – we came the closest to doing equal parts leading for much of the day. As there have been on-going problems with Des's car, he drove straight through to Alice Springs to get his car looked at by an auto-electrician. Betty and Barry were already in Alice Springs, having driven through last nights stop at Stuarts Well. So it was just us 3 riders and Pat today.We had our first stop as planned at the Mt Polhill Rest Area. Another impressive rest area with toilets - and a communication "dish". The ride was reasonably uneventful, and once we got through the first 60 kms, we knew it would be downhill from there. We had one wreck of a car overtake us and stop a couple of times and on each occasion the occupants yelled out and waved their arms about. It was a bit of a worry. When Pat drove past them at one stage they ran out on the road and tried to stop her. - She didn't stop. Shortly after we passed signs saying we were near a Correctional Centre - I wondered if these 2 had been in there - or if they keep behaving this way they may well end up in there!! We crossed the railway line about 8 kms south of Alice which was right near the Finke Drag Racing strip. I think this will be a busy place for the next couple of days. We got closer to town and there were highly modified and souped up cars everywhere. They were making deafening noises “doing their thing” along the road was amazing. It took a while to book into camp – but we were settled on our site by 1:00 pm Pat and I are definitely trying to make tomorrow a rest day – so we set to in the afternoon and did 2 huge loads of washing. Half we hung on the line in the sunshine, the other half whirred away in the dryer. It was great to get everything up to date and all clothes, bedding and towels washed and clean – free of red dust – for one day at least! The temperature has definitely warmed up and short sleeves, no jackets etc are the order of the day. We are going to get mighty hot riding in days to come was my thought! We had a meeting planned at the Alice Springs Library where we spoke to the people and donated books that will be used in their new programme aimed at getting books into remote communities. It was very interesting to hear what is going on in the community to help aboriginal families, and it was a very interesting afternoon. I was suspecting it could be quite noisy at the camp. It was packed out, and mainly with car enthusiasts. Surprisingly it was pretty quiet - apart from some unco-operative children being home-schooled in the tent in front of us - nothing to do with the car people at all!! We managed to get some of our shopping done at the Coles Supermarket - and missed the road closure time for the Grand Parade by mere minutes. Instead we were 2 cars back at the closed southern end roundabout - so had a birdseye view of every vehicle coming through. I'm not that "into" cars, and after the first 50 had gone through I was well and truly bored - but we couldn't go anywhere so had to sit through 90 minutes of it!! We'd picked up a Cole's Rotisserie Chicken for dinner, so made some salad and had dinner in our van. A fair ride and a lot of stuff done today! |
AUTHOR ROBYN OSBORNE
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