Author: Mrs A
Saturday – location: Arumber
We continued our journey south from Ti-Tree to Alice Springs, arriving late morning. We filled up with fuel and topped up our fresh fruit and vegetable supplies before heading to our campground for the night. We could have carried on driving towards Uluru, but really felt like a break from the car.
Arumber is located about 20 minutes drive outside of Alice Springs, and our destination (Temple Bar Caravan Park) is nestled in a dry riverside location, overlooked by the rugged red of the Western MacDonnell Ranges. We’d chosen to locate ourselves outside of Alice due to the bad reputation for theft within the outback town – and lo and behold, our camping neighbours tell us their friends experienced just that a few days ago.
The campground was full of birdlife, many Major Mitchell’s Pink Cockatoos in the trees, flocking to the grasses to munch on seeds. Several pairs of ring-necked parrots also frequented our camp, reminding us we are in the outback.
We had a nice stroll around admiring the scenery and enjoying the feeling of being upright!
Sunday – location: Petermann
After a peaceful night’s sleep we took off again on Sunday morning, commencing our journey towards Uluru. We picked up some final supplies in Alice Springs before heading south. It was quite surreal seeing signs pointing us towards Adelaide after all this time – our next big city south.
Uluru is a deceptively long way away from Alice Springs, and we had decided to break the 450km drive in two. Our final stop for the day was a free camp, about 1.5 hours drive away from Yulara.
There were no facilities, just rubbish bins, picnic tables and plenty of flat areas to park up. This didn’t worry us though, as we are completely self contained. Stepping out of the car, the cold and the wind was a shock – it was about 14 degrees centigrade, the coldest we have been in a long while – thank goodness for the diesel heating!
It was fabulous being away from any light pollution though, and before we retired for the night it was a great opportunity to admire the incredible starlit sky which seemed to go on and on forever. I can honestly say I forgot how cold it was in my admiration of the Milky Way – just amazing.
Love the milky way thanks for the show