Goodbye Wycliffe Well!
Unfortunately our next door neighbour woke up before we managed to break
camp so we had the pleasure of listening to her bark orders while her family
packed up their van as well. Much of the
discussion this morning was whether or not their aim to drive to Daly Waters
was achievable. At 539km – yep sure –
but only if you don’t want to see anything on the way!
As we pulled out of the park and up to the pumps for fuel I was so
disappointed to see the mess left from the night before and beyond. Beer cans just tossed where they had been
consumed and as we drove out of the roadhouse area the amount of rubbish,
plastic bags, beer cans, wine bottles – just astounding and particularly the
mess that was in the area under the bridge where the local Aboriginal people
spent most of their day. We couldn’t
help but feel such empathy for the owners of the roadhouse and what must be
their daily struggle to keep a business going despite the obvious impact the
locals must have based on our own personal experiences over two nights.
A fire still smouldered where last night, having pushed their car to
the fuel pumps to await the roadhouse’s opening hour of 7.30am, two Aboriginal
men had spent the night in the service station car park.
Clear skies again this morning and warmth in the air, we set off to our
next stop of Tennant Creek. We again
passed by the Devils Marbles viewing them this time from the highway. You get a better sense from here of the huge
area these boulders cover. This was
another of the sights that will forever remain indelibly imprinted in our
minds.
A few kms further down the road and a not so pleasant sight of an
enormous snake on the road. It was
slowly moving across the highway on the other side of the road and almost as
wide as the lane it was in. I was more
than happy to be driving by at 90kms per hour and not stop for a photo opportunity
for this moment.
There isn’t much to see in the 134km journey between these two
locations although the ant hills continued to dot the countryside and at one
point for about a kilometre I think you would have done well to find a square
metre without an ant hill they were so close together.
We pulled in to the Tennant Creek showgrounds around lunch time and got
ourselves set up. We had planned to stay
here for the weekend as the Tennant Creek show is on and there are two dog
shows Friday and Saturday, however given Kitty now has her Championship and my
knee still isn’t feeling much better, we opted to catch up again with Kerrie
and John but forgo the showing. A good
decision I think after looking at the showring which while it has green grass
on it, also has numerous holes which would make running a character building
exercise and I can’t afford to do any more damage with 8 weeks of driving a
manual car to go.
On setting up we ventured in to Tennant Creek to take a look around and
get a few supplies. Just up the road
from the showground is the local Council offices and hearing a few weeks ago
that someone I used to work with was now working there we decided to drop by
and say hello. Clearly my informant was
a little behind as he had left a couple of weeks ago and the guy at the front
desk informed us that there had been 20 vacancies created in the past 8 weeks
and that the turnover of staff was very high.
Followed quickly by – When can you start? Hahahaha – maybe not!
We stopped in at the local bottle shop to buy a bottle of wine and found
yet more sad facts about life in the outback.
Evidently locals are only able to purchase wine casks (2 litre) between
4pm – 6pm and only one cask per person.
The bottle shops no longer stock the larger casks and have to restrict
the purchase of alcohol to try to reduce the amount of drinking and also to try
to assist with reducing the very high family violence incidence.
We returned to camp and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and
catching up on a bit of internet reading (and blog posting) and chatting with
friends. The new freezer has been worth
its weight in gold despite being an imposing element in the caravan. Being able to just thaw out and reheat
something for dinner has been a welcome thing on quite a few nights without
having to worry about the preparation required for things like lasagne,
meatloaf etc.
The camping area was well lit – and I mean WELL lit. The two massive spotlights on either side of
the camp certainly provide security and one is very happy to have had blockout
curtains on the van. Even then the
amount of light streaming through the four seasons hatch in the roof was enough
to ensure no lighting was needed in the van to find anything in the early
morning hours.
What was most surprising was the absolute quiet throughout the
night. Not a car, a voice, even all the
surrounding dogs were completely silent.
With no wind, you would expect there would be some sound in a town this
size – but any time I woke during the night I could hear absolute silence.
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