Day 47 - 49 Katherine to Alice Springs

The afternoon we drive the 300 km to Daly Waters Pub where we spend the night (in the camp ground not the pub).Every town or "place" seems to have a theme in the outback and the theme at Daly Waters Pub seems to be women's underwear.

Like Daly Waters, our next stop off to break the 500 km journey the following day is Newcastle Waters which like many of the places we pass through on our way to Alice Springs has a history that started in the 1870's when the Australian interior was really explored for the first time by those surveying and building the overland telegraph.Every 200 km or so there is a telegraph repeater station and as the interior opened up to cattle ranches these stations, which were usually located near water, became stopovers for the cattle drovers moving the cattle to the eastern markets.Then when gold was found some of these places became boom and then later ghost towns.Around 1919 places like Katherine and Daly Waters became stopovers for the new Qantas flights.

We are really getting into the outback now.Since leaving Katherine the evenings are much cooler and we need to start sleeping under sleeping bags.The vegetation is much sparser and the soil is very red.Just before sunset we reach the Devil's Marbles which the indigenous population believes are the eggs of the dream serpent.As the sun sets these boulders start to glow red.

After our longest day driving so far we stop at a campsite in Wycliffe Well which has an alien theme and a supplementary King Kong bedroom theme room.However, this is nothing compared to the weirdos staying at the campsite.

Since leaving Darwin we have driven 1500 km and are now within a day of Alice Springs and the centre of Oz.It is now that we head off the beaten track to the East MacDonnell Ranges for two days of proper off roading.We have to register with the national parks people who will start to come and look for us in 2.5 days if we have not checked back in.I am a little apprehensive as our only 4WD experience to date is at the Jim Jim Falls and it feels weird taking our campervan along what is in many cases a dried up river bed.We are able to add wallabies to our list of Aussie criters that we have spotted.We end the day in a deserted gold mining ghost town and spend the night in a deserted campsite and for the first time (and one of only a few times in my life) we really are alone under the stars.In fact by the end of the 2 days we have only seen two other vehicles.

The second day we take the 4WD track to Ruby Gap which is a 90 km round trip.Averaging 20km/h as we inch our way along the track it takes us the best park of the day and is really challenging as even though most of the rivers have dried up we still have to ford some rivers and drive up and down some unfeasible steep and narrow tracks.