This morning, as we continue to adjust to the 'descent into Winter' as Matt puts it, we had an early start and were back on the road and leaving Alice Springs. We find Alice to be quite beautiful with the surrounding rocky outcropped hills, now covered in green patches of bush and grass and median strips with Sturt desert peas in full flower, but growing like a weed all over the median strips. The green continued as we left town and on the Stuart Highway. you could see parts of the West Macdonnell Ranges and many other mountain ranges along the way. We haven't seen it this green before. We got a couple hundred kilometres down the road, before we stopped at Kulgera for morning tea and later we stopped at Marla for lunch and hot drinks.We were now in South Australia and it was encouraging to see it with a little bit of green on the ground for a change, though probably won't be there for long. We spied eagles, exploding cows (result of a truck vs cows incident) and the Bakers spotted a dingo today. We had idiots overtake us whilst towing caravans and driving way too fast and tailgating as well. But overall it was a good drive, until not far out from Coober Pedy, Ian calls out on the radio that his engine had cut out and wouldn't restart. It was a problem that had occurred to others in the Clipper club with Cummins motors, and the shut down solenoid was faulting. A quick cable-tie temporary fix got us to our evening campsite, a free camp on the south side of Coober Pedy. Matt was able to wind together some fencing wire to create a more robust temporary fix for Ian's engine.
We have this great spot tonight, with only a few other well-spread out campers, a few hundred metres away (although we can still hear someone's TV and dogs). We collected kindling for a campfire and made some coals to cook dinner on. Brenda made another cheese and bacon damper, and we baked potatoes, pumpkin and our meat in the camp ovens over the coals. I made a coleslaw and it was a great dinner, as we watched the sun set, the stars start to appear as the pink dusky sky on the horizon slowly faded and with a darkening sky up above, it was perfect. We sat around the campfire after dinner to keep warm, as we chatted and laughed and passed around chocolate. The Milky Way was quite clear tonight, as the sky was cloud free. It was a great end to the day.
i dont have much to add other than i love this part of the country. cant explain why. maybe its a childhood thing but i always feel connected to the desert .
