Road Tripping: Alice Springs

Between Yulara and Alice Springs we stopped in Erldunda to refuel.  There’s supposed to be a Big Thing there, a Big Echidna.  When I asked about it at the petrol station they had no clue what I was talking about at first.  Finally they realised what I was asking about and they told me it had been ruined by mice and the like.  It used to be where their emu farm is now.  We were happy to see the emus.  We’d stopped here on the way to Uluru and happily watched them for a good while.  On our way back through we were lucky to be able to feed them, a tour group was leaving and gave us their extra feed.  I could not keep JitterBug(8) off the ground, he was so enchanted with the emus. TurboBug found food pieces on the ground and threw them through the fence at the ‘meemus’.  They happily followed him around hoping for more.  The sound an emu makes is so peculiar, it’s like a  hollow thumping noise.  With a couple of dozen emus we heard them ‘talking’ plenty. Have you ever fed an emu by hand?  You place the food in your hand with your palm flat so that they can’t pinch your palm.  I tried it and it didn’t feel very good.  The kids were downright afraid to feed them! I can’t blame them, look at that mouth!  When they raise their heads they are as tall as I am!  We started placing the food on that wooden railing and the emus were happy to eat from that. When you are heading to Alice Springs there is a stretch of road with no speed limit.  I had never seen such a sign before!  There’s just nothing out here.  Towing the van we couldn’t go very fast anyway, so we were passed many times. Not far north of Alice Springs is the monument marking the Tropic of Capricorn which we stopped at the day we left Alice.  It’s only 30km outside of town, so the kids were not keen to get out of the car, we hadn’t been in it long enough yet.  This trip has made our perception of distances a little warped.  What used to seem like a long drive is not so long anymore.  🙂 We stopped at Aileron that day to refuel.  Don’t stop there if you can help it, the price was too high and with a credit card surcharge on top of it!  The toilets were in the pub but they were clean enough and they didn’t mind the kids walking through to get to them.  Outside were these lovely goannas. Also this lovely man in a loincloth, watching over the petrol pumps. Nearby is the huge Anmatjere Woman and Child.  It’s so hard to tell how big it is in these pictures, but it’s huge.  The trees in the background give you an idea.  The goanna is taller than I am. Off in the distance you can see the Anmatjere Man statue.  He’s 17 metres tall and weighs more than 8 tonnes.  Both he and his family were created by a sculptor from Alice Springs.  It requires a short walk to get to the man on the hill, we didn’t do since we wanted to get back on the road. There’s that no speed limit sign again. The raod trains were massive.  Four trailers on this one.  This is the only size trucks we’ve seen for ages.  Normal semis with just one trailer will seem tiny! Our next stop is the Devil’s Marbles near Tennant Creek.  We skipped these on our way south to Uluru as we knew we’d be coming back this way.  Then on up to Katherine, Kakadu, and Darwin.  North, north, and north!