The next leg of the Follow the Sun Relay will be undertaken by NT couple Ellen and Les. The couple will drive from Alice Springs to Darwin over a three-week period. Their first leg is Alice Springs to Wycliffe Wells.
We love Alice Springs and we LOVE being back in the NT! The folks at Apollo Motorhomes Alice Springs were all so nice and welcomed us to our van. The whole rental process was easy as! Absolute legends!
First things first, we headed to Coles to stock up our Dometic three way fridge which is HUGE- it’s like Marry Poppin’s bag, it just never ends!!
We stayed the night at Ti Tree Roadhouse and Caravan Park, it’s the most central pub in Australia and like a desert oasis! Great feed, cold drinks and the caravan park is top quality.
There was a nice selection of powered or unpowered sites, male & female bathrooms, a laundry, fire pit and camp kitchen, and that’s not all!
If we had more time here we definitely would’ve had a dip in the beautiful blue pool under the spinning windmill!
We made a quick pit stop at Barrow Creek Hotel, where the beer is cold, burgers are delicious and the walls are covered in lots of weird and wonderful things that could keep you looking around in there for hours! We reckon you just have to stop in for the novelty of asking the owner to list all his heavy beers. He’ll fire them off and crack one open for you just as fast!
The UFO Capitol of Australia, Wycliffe Wells is a bit of a spooky stop with the roadhouse being covered in aliens and spaceships! When you pass through to get fuel you would think there’s really not much out there, but the caravan park is full of weird and wacky things to explore!
We pulled up in the row of shady powered sites, grabbed our park map and started to wander. Firstly, the unpowered sites look incredible, it’s crazy to see such lush green grass in the middle of red dirt! The park has a bit of an abandoned theme park feel, you can see the old run down building out the back that use to be the ‘300 seated auditorium’ and the ‘Mt Wycliffe lookout’ which is now just a view of gum trees… some pretty nice gumtrees though! If you go for a little bit of a bush walk you’ll find the friendly donkeys in their paddock, ready for you to give them a scratch. Then to the right is the resident Emu, also very friendly but is only keen if you bring food!
The indoor pool is closed, along with the road to the lake… which has dried up. You’d think this place would give you the creeps, but the incredible painted art, random statues and characters of the park make it so much fun to explore! We walked around for hours!
About 25km north of Wycliffe Wells is Karlu Karlu or ‘Devils Marbles’. As it is a conservation reserve, dogs are only allowed in the day carpark area and there are restrictions on where you can photograph. There is a number of walking trails, ranging from easy short walks, to longer rougher hikes.
We took a quick easy walk up the Devils Marbles and it’s a sight you just have to see to believe. When you reach the top of the rocks, you can see more rock formations and hills right out to the horizon. Photos are welcome on one side, so we got some cool shots lookout out on the horizon. There is an area that the Indigenous elders have asked not to be photographed or walked on, and it is AMAZING! If you’re ever passing through the big beautiful NT…you have to stop, at least just to have a quick look at the Devils Marbles and the areas you’ll never see in photographs.
That’s it from us this week!
Ellen and Les
Check out more Follow the Sun Relay posts here.
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