Jaypatrol

We arrive at Alice Springs at last, on the 4th of June at 4pm .
We booked into the Heavitree Gap Caravan Park for a week at first, but ended up staying there for 4 weeks. Lindy camped near us.
After the first night camped under the trees, we decided to shift from the site we were on and moved into a clearing in the park, as the birds were camping overhead and not only were they noisy in the evening and early in the morning, but were making such a mess, by leaving their calling cards on the vans and matting outside the doorways. Arthur reckons they should make glue from this stuff as it was so hard to clean off.

The next morning we caught up with the usual washing etc.
As we were so tired, we rested for the first few days. Lindy and some of the others in the park suggested that I had finally “hit the wall” when I arrived as I was so tired. I was still struggling with the virus I had a few days earlier and all I wanted to do was sleep. So we chilled out till we were all bright eyed and bushy tailed again. We did get the usual shopping to stock up the larder and checked out a few shops in the town.

When I was up to it, Arthur and I got the bikes out and decided to tackle the 10 kilometre return ride into the township. The weather was warm and the ride was easy on the bike track. It was a leisurely peddle.

We went into KMart and the nearby sports store. We also went to the Coles store to pick up a few necessities.

On the Wednesday afternoon, Arthur went to the truck museum, as he had heard about it from friends and wanted to check it out for himself.

On Wednesday evening, we walked over to feed the Black Footed Wallabies in the Park. As Heavitree Gap (the Gap between the West and East McDonnell Ranges), is where the Caravan Park is sited , we were fortunate to have these gorgeous little balls of fluff on hand, every night. They come down from the mountain each night to be fed. They were so cute and friendly. The Park has bags of pellets to purchase, for feeding them. These little cuties are so tame that they feed directly from your hand and if you look like getting distracted by any of the other wallabies, he will grab your hand and pull you back to himself. They are so soft to touch.

Then, when we were all rested, we checked out the local camping store as we had seen it advertised on the local TV. It was quite a good store and we purchased a few things, including a smaller version of a “camel pack” a backpack with a bladder in it to carry water (ours can carry 2 litres of water and has lots of pockets to carry extras, like lunch, sunscreen etc), when we were either hiking or riding our bikes. These packs also have a hose fitting that fits into the strap over your shoulder so that you can sip water whilst riding or walking. Lindy bought one too. Later on, Margy, Lindy’s friend from WA bought one as well. These were certainly our best buy.

On Friday. we headed up to Anzac Hill. This overlooks Alice Springs and a good place to get your bearings as Alice Springs is a bit jumbled when it comes to the town planning. It took us a while to remember where places and shops were. This was a lovely spot. Until then, I hadn’t realised that Alice Springs is in a bowl with the McDonnell ranges surrounding it.

On Friday evening, Lindy ’shouted’ us dinner in the Heavitree Gap Hotel, which is on the edge of the Caravan Park. This was certainly a surprise evening as there is entertainment every night.
On the first night we were there, two country and western singers were performing. I am not usually a C & W fan, but these guys were good. We all enjoyed the night immensely. The singers were Chris Callahan and Scott Dawson. They worked well together, bouncing off one another all night. We laughed and sang along throughout the show. Scotty could play the violin like you never heard before. We dropped in to the hotel regulary after that, just to hear these two. We didn’t have to eat a meal or even buy a drink as we were staying in the park. So every night we could have entertainment if we wanted.

Chris used to walk pass our caravan on the way to the hotel in the evening. He always stopped to have a short chat and tell us that is was “a new show tonight-all different songs”. We bought 2 of Chris’ CD’s and have just about worn them out playing them so often.

On Saturday, Arthur and I visited the Desert Park on the outskirts of the township. This was a great day. The Park was very well set out. It had displays of all the local flora and fauna. I loved the Thorny Devils. They were ugly looking little reptiles, but cute too. We got a few good photos here for the website. The highlight was the “Birds of Prey” demonstration. There were an Owl,
a Kestrel, and an Australian Hobby. Unfortunately for Arthur, the Wedge-tailed Eagles were nesting and were not available for the show. He had hoped to get some good photos of the Eagle.

Lindy left on Sunday the 11th to fly to Singapore for about 11 days, to catch up with her friends and do a little shopping. We baby-sat her mobile home in her absence.

On the second week, Arthur and I thought it was time for checking out the West McDonnell Ranges. After packing a lunch and filling the water bladders in the back packs and headed off for Ellery Creek Big Hole. This was such a pretty spot. The park has been well provided with pathways, BBQ areas (where BBQ’s are provided with free gas for cooking) and tables and seats for visitors. It is a popular swimming hole and the water looked cool and very inviting. Unfortunately it wasn’t ideal weather at this time of year. But I imagine that it is very busy in season. Ellery Creek Big Hole was not too far from Alice Springs.As we hoped to see all the gorges in the West McDonnell ranges, we decided to go to the furtherest site next. This next stop was at Glen Helen Gorge. This was a little different to Ellery Creek, but very beautiful also with a waterhole that is used in season for swimming. There is a Resort here for those who like this kind of accommodation. But from the outside it looked pretty ordinary.

Ormiston Gorge was our next stop. I loved this site. There is a short walk up the track to the waterhole and there is a sandbed where the river flows (when there is rain) that we walked down on the way back to the carpark. We could see the fish in the water here, in the water hole, but it didn’t look like they were very healthy and there were a lot of dying and dead fish at the waters edge, as the water was stagnating from lack of rain. We walked further into the gorge and there was a man sitting on top of a high rock, sketching the surrounding scenery. He pointed out to us that there were Black Footed Wallabies up the hillside. We saw one of them.

When we got back to the car, we had our picnic lunch before heading off again.

Moving down the highway, we stopped off at The Ochre Pits next. This is where the local aboriginal people collect the ochre for their artwork. These were awesome as the side of the hill had layers of red, yellow, orange and white ochre. Unfortunately the photos don’t show the intensity of the colours as we saw them with the naked eye.

Our last stop off for the day was at Serpentine Gorge as it was getting very late and nightfall was not far off. Whether it was because we were getting tired at the end of the day, we were a little disappointed here. It was a longer and rougher drive into this gorge and we may have been spoilt by the other spectacular places we had visited. It was lovely all the same, with another water hole at the end.

After here we were weary and dusty, so we headed back to the Caravan Park. It was only about 17 kilometres away.

To be continued:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 9th, 2006 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.