Day 40 - Aileron to Alice Springs
This cold weather is really taking some getting used to. They are forecasting -2C for Alice Springs tonight. Much as Lisa and I love each (and our respective families), and we are cooking joint dinners, tonight we actually ate in our own caravans as it is just too cold outside to be socialable. We are still seriously considering heading back up north. They say Alice Springs is "a day's drive from everywhere". Well, a warm part of everywhere would be great right about now.We all slept well last night with heaters on so none of us were up early. Coffees were had and dressing involved layers and we were on the road again by 9am. Our original plan had involved heading straight out to the West McDonnell Ranges before coming back to spend a few nights in Alice Springs. But a few comments made us rethink that so as soon as we arrived in Alice Springs, we went straight to the tourist information centre to ask for advice on this. The advice was that we could easily do a day trip out to the ranges so we decided to stay here for 4 nights instead. We had already done some investigations into caravan parks here and found out they were pretty busy and sure enough, when we rocked up to the Big 4, they said we wouldn't be able to have two sites side by side. However, as we have discovered, it is better to have caravan park maintenance men on side, so when the reception staff tried to offer us the overflow sites - on the proviso we saw them first - Allan the maintenance man took Lisa and I out in his electric golf buggy and showed us a pretty perfect wide and long site that would easily fit in our two vans (and wasn't an overflow site). The only downside was that there was a school group 20 metres away - but they are leaving tomorrow. So we came and set up and then had lunch.
Before this, Greg and I had been to the local Beaurepaire centre to see if we could get a slow leak in one of our rear caravan tyres fixed. We discovered it as we were about to leave Darwin and it has been such a slow leak that we have just used the compressor each morning to put air in and we haven't had a problem on the road. The very helpful men at Beaurepaire did it on the spot (and neither of us had to put a jack under the caravan - bonus!) and discovered two very small issues - a tiny nail and a tiny split. All fixed and on our way to the caravan park within 15 minutes.
Before heading out for the afternoon, we made some bookings for the next few nights after here, as it seems this town is full of every caravan in Australia. Then we headed to the Royal Flying Doctor Service centre. We were just in time for a tour, which showed us different information to what we had seen in Longreach so we really enjoyed it.
After our beautiful dinner cooked by Lisa and eaten in our respective vans as mentioned earlier, Greg and I are indulging in some TV in the warmth of our caravan - oh, and updating the blog after days without service!
posted by Tracey @ 9:26 pm
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