We are on holiday!

Sunday 17th July

Another freezing night in the West MacDonnell Ranges! I’m pretty sure the kids and I would happily stay in the tent all morning after these sorts of nights, except that as soon as the sun comes out, the condensation that has frozen on the tent ceiling starts to melt and rain down on us! 🥶

We packed up camp to move on. The ranger came to check out our camping permit, which of course we didn’t have since Amelia booked our site for us! He was lovely though, and has obviously cooped a lot of grief from people about the new booking system that doesn’t work on phones….it would be most frustrating for the people working on the ground. I also don’t really believe he would have made us move on if we didn’t have permits, which some other campers told us at Ellery creek, so I’m not so sure on that advice now. Anyway he gave us some great tips on where to stay heading north if we couldn’t get into the parks, so we have multiple back up plans!

We stopped in Alice Springs to get supplies – the fresh fruit and veg mum and dad bought us was almost completely gone, except for a cucumber and bag of potatoes! Richie braved Woolies while I took the kids to get some new shoes and work out the next 2 nights. I rang national parks and was able to book 2 nights at Karlu Karlu – devil’s marbles, yay! Now hopefully our site isn’t filled with 20 other campers that didn’t know they had to book 😣 I stopped at a bakery since the kids were famished by then, and it had just closed! The owner must have recognised the look of desperation crossed with disappointment on the kids (and my) faces, as she grabbed us a bag of lime curd filled donuts and a lime meringue pie for free 😀 so the kids and I thought Alice Springs was great, while Richie had a typically horrid time at Woolies, and couldn’t even enjoy the bakery treats ☹️

The drive from Alice continued, with the kids and I fuelled on a donut inspired sugar high. This lasted approximately 5 minutes before Otis fell fast asleep! The landscape became much more shrubby, and small termite mounds popped up everywhere, some of them were even dressed! We pushed straight on through to Karlu Karlu, arriving at about 6, the boulders suddenly magically appearing in the landscape. The campground was packed with caravans, but we had booked a tent site in the overflow section which had no other campers so there was plenty of space for us, hooray! The kids were desperate to explore the boulders but by the time camp was set up it was dark and time for dinner – a simple picnic of raw veg, hummus, cheese and crackers, after a donut fuelled day! We will have a day of rock hopping and exploring ahead of us tomorrow!