September 24th, 2024
It continued to rain over night here in Stuarts Well and was still raining when we got up. The parking area was a bit slick as it’s red dirt but Matilda handled it well with Doug’s skillful driving. We decided to head straight to Alice Springs to look for propane, do laundry, grocery shop and then see the town. It was supposed to stop raining by around noon.
We tried three places before finding propane and right beside that gas station where we could swap the tank, was a laundromat, so we parked and took care of both chores. Fran did her yoga while the clothes washed and Doug went for a run after it stopped raining.
Alice Springs is a town in central Australia in the state of Northern Territory. The name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd, wife of the telegraph pioneer Sir Charles Todd. Known colloquially as The Alice or simply Alice, the town is situated roughly in Australia’s geographic centre. It is nearly equidistant from Adelaide and Darwin.
The town straddles the usually dry Todd River on the northern side of the MacDonnell Ranges. The surrounding region is known as Central Australia, or the Red Centre, an arid environment consisting of several deserts. Temperatures in Alice Springs can vary, with an average maximum in summer of 35.6 °C (96.1 °F) and an average minimum in winter of 5.1 °C (41.2 °F)
After running the fridge on the new gas bottle for a couple of hours with no luck, we had to surmise it needed at the minimum, to be repaired. We went looking for refrigeration/electrical shops and at the third place, were recommended to go see Carl at Alice Springs Fridge Works. We called and he told us to come right over and he’d at least look at it but may not be able to work on it till the next day; that was a bit of luck as most places said it would be two weeks IF they could even look at it.
We drove over and within a half hour he determined that the fridge no longer had coolant and that it cannot be refilled. The fridge is twenty years old (probably the original one) and we’d need to replace it. He had a couple of used ones in the back but both were the wrong size. He made a few calls and found a place that he was told had a floor model that would fit. We drove over straight away but it was not an upright fridge at all but rather a chest style that wouldn’t work in the space we had. We then looked at a couple of furniture stores for bar fridges that might fit and we’d just run it off the inverter. No luck they were all too tall and few had freezers.
Then Fran spotted a big camping/ caravan supply store that looked like it might have closed for the day (it was now 4:53pm) and we pulled in and it was still open. They had two upright RV fridges, and one had a freezer. The price was dear but the dimensions were good. So that shop made a BIG sale just before closing that day! The sales clerk helped Doug take it out to the rig, it wouldn’t fit through the door easy at this point but Fran suggested to put it in the front seat, that was a no go too. Instead we got it inside the coach over the bar that was restricting and drove it straight over to Carl’s place because if we left it inside, we couldn’t get in and out. Carl told us to come back in the morning at 7am and the install work could begin.
We found the closest campground to the shop (there is no wild camping in or relatively close to Alice Springs) and we booked two nights with power ($42 AUD per night) We just made popcorn for dinner and had cold beer/cider and settled in for the night.
That night Doug read that the outback has had record rainfall for September – we can attest to that! Uluru apparently rarely ever gets rain and there were waterfalls running down it the past two days! As you know from our last post, we had seen newly formed waterfalls in Kings Canyon when we hiked. People say this arid zone is turning back into the tropical zone it was thousands of years ago; the past few years, there’s been periods of humidity now that there never has been in our generation’s lifetime.
Wednesday morning, we were up at 6, stopped for more ice enroute to Carl’s shop, and he was there as promised.
We drove in and in about 15 minutes he got work as he could no longer wait for his young employee. Benjamin, who hadn’t show up as yet. We both went for walks and met up later at the hardware store for a couple of things and by the time Fran got back, the old fridge was being taken out, and they were working on fitting the space for the new one.
Now it took quite a while to get the space ready and when it was, the new fridge was a tad too tall; okay they shortened the legs. Then it was a tad too wide! Now they took out a spare board on the one side and it was still a bit too tall so they removed the counter over the top and put in a new one. We both went over to the hardware store, Bunnings to get a couple of things and had lunch in the “Hardware Café”.
Doug also wanted the set up to be that the fridge ran on the 12v truck battery while we were driving and after looking around town for someone to arrange that, he spoke to Carl for a recommendation and he said he could do it. At 2:30 we were still waiting for all the work to be done. Fran was able to get online and “work” in Carl’s office and Doug went for more walks.
By 4pm Benjamin said it was time to quit but he ended up staying another half hour to get the fridge fully installed but no work had started on the alternator set up although Carl had gone to get the fuses, relays and wiring need. He told us to come back at 8am tomorrow for that work and it shouldn’t take more than 90 minutes.
Doug discussed price with Carl and was able to barter with him to take our generator and $100 for payment for today. We store it inside the rig and there’s always a slight smell of gasoline and it’s affecting Doug’s sleep as his head is near it at night. We are considering add a bumper to the back of the camper but don’t feel it can take the weight of a gennie as the chassis is quite a bit under the camper so it would be quite cantilevered.
We returned to the campground stopping at Subway to grab some dinner because even though we have a working fridge, it’s not cold as yet and we really just wanted a cold beer, a shower and an easy dinner. That all went according to plan as when we got to the campground we decided to stay a third night so Fran went to the office and paid for another night and got us cold ones out of their fridge.
Next morning, after running, Doug took Matilda back to Carl’s place after dumping and Fran stayed behind to wash our carpet. The tile in Matilda is covered with a sturdy indoor/outdoor carpet which has been smartly cut into squares and shapes to fit the floor; this makes it super easy to clean as you can just remove the “puzzle piece” you want to wash. Before the old fridge came out it was not latched one time and all the cans inside spilled out. Two diet cokes and a beer managed to get leaks and spilled out most of their contents. So as in theory, the job today should only take a couple of hours max she stayed back to do that and she kept her laptop as well. She washed all of the pieces in the laundry sinks in the laundry room at the campground. Around each camp site here (as you can see in the photo above) is a short wooden fence made of round logs and she was able to drape the pieces over that to dry. She then hung around in the outdoor camp kitchen where there are power outlets doing things online while waiting to hear that Doug was returning.
Finally around 2 Doug said it was all done; the fridge install was fully completed, things were put back together and wiring to the alternator so the batteries will charge while Matilda is being driven was completed. Phew! A long time but we were SO fortunate to be able to get all that done in such a small remote city.
Doug picked up Fran and we drove into the town centre to go grocery shopping at Woolies. This store in this small city had everything we needed. We packed up the food into our rig and new fridge – which we find is more spacious and well designed and drove a few blocks away (as the parking where we were was max two hours) and went over to the Royal Flying Doctors Service museum here. If you recall the one we tried to see in Broken Hill was under renovation so we missed that one.
Here we got in with the pensioner’s rate (doesn’t always work as you are supposed to have a OZ card) and were taken in and shown the layout and given some basic information
The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is an air medical service in Australia. It is a non-profit organization that provides emergency and primary health care services for those living in rural, remote and regional areas of Australia who cannot access a hospital or general practice due to the vast distances of the Outback.
The Reverend John Flynn had worked in rural and remote areas of the state of Victoria and was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church to look at the needs of people living in the outback. His report to the Presbyterian Assembly in 1912 resulted in the establishment of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM), of which he was appointed Superintendent. In 1928, he formed the AIM Aerial Medical Service, a one-year experiment based in Cloncurry, Queensland. This experiment later became The Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Victorian pilot Lieutenant (John) Clifford Peel sent Flynn a letter explaining how he had seen a missionary doctor visiting isolated patients using a plane. Assisted by costing estimates by Peel, Flynn immediately took the idea of using aircraft to begin his idea, and published Peel’s idea in the church’s newsletter. Peel died in combat in September 1918, probably not even knowing the impact he had in the creation of an Australian icon.
Together with Alfred Traeger, Flynn began experiments with radios in the mid-1920s to enable remote outposts to contact a centralized medical base. The pedal radio was the first result of this collaboration. These were distributed gradually to stations, missions, and other human residences around Cloncurry, the base site for a 50-watt transmitter.
By 1928, Flynn had gathered sufficient funds through fundraising activities to launch the experiment of the AMS on 15 May. Its supporters included one of the founders of Qantas. Qantas supplied the first aircraft to the fledgling organization. On 17 May 1928, two days after inception, the service’s first official flight departed from Cloncurry, 85 miles to Julia Creek in Central Queensland, where the plane was met by over 100 people at the airstrip. Qantas charged two shillings per mile for use of the Victory during the first year of the project.
Within the first year of operations, the service flew approximately 20,000 miles in 50 flights, becoming the first comprehensive air ambulance service in the world. Nowadays, the service is supported by the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, but still relies heavily on fundraising and donations from the community to purchase and medically equip its aircraft, and to finance other major capital initiatives.
Sister Myra Blanch was one of the first nurses, known as “Flying Sisters”, to join the service. She was key in the New South Wales Section operations during the 1940s and 50s, even though Flying Nurses didn’t actually become regular until the 1960s. Many patient transports are conducted with an RFDS nurse and pilot only on board. Nurses have been responsible for many innovations to the service, including an addition to the RFDS medical chest to incorporate a “body chart” (1951) created by Sister Blanch. The chart was an anatomical representation of a human being, with areas clearly numbered. With such a chart, a remote doctor can ask the patient “where is the pain felt?” and receive a comprehensible reply. The medicines contained in the chest are similarly numbered for ease in communicating medical instructions.
We were told that funding is 70% by donations even to this day. There is an emergency call every 2 minutes over the entire country and every10 mins in the states of Northern Territory and South Australia alone. They currently have a fleet of 75 planes and help approximately 38,000 patients in a year. The pilots fly 24/7 and in a year they fly the equivalent of 34 trips to the moon and back!
In the museum there is the plane you can climb in to see what it’s like inside one of them:
Then you go sit and experience two difference virtual reality experiences: one aboard an emergency flight and another a more scenic flight over the outback.
We later watched a short film about the history of the service as well.
Next we walked across the road to the Alice Springs Reptile Centre. As we hope to never see too many snakes or even reptiles in the wild, this was a way to see and learn about them.
We got there too late to take part in a free guided tour but were able to walk around ourselves. We saw lots of lizards, geckos, snakes and a croc (for all their names, check the gallery link below).
It was now time to head back to the campground and relax a bit before dinner. It was nice to have power to run the AC in the later afternoon/early evening until the interior cooled off. It was by no means super hot but having the rig being worked on out in the sun all day certainly heated it up. While at the shop, we did get plugged in so when they worked inside they could use the AC.
Friday morning after showering, we made out way out of Alice Springs to see a few nearby sites.
The first was The Alice Springs Desert Park – it’s sort of a zoo but with mostly birds and some animals in their natural habitat. It’s in a lovely area and it was early morning so it was not busy at all. We hoped to get a chance to encounter dingoes as we’d seen none in the outback and see some unusual birds. Turned out there was a Dingo Talk at 8:45 am so our timing was good.
Here are some of the birds we saw, with the red tailed black cockatoo and the Australian bustard being the main attractions for us:
The Australian bustard is a large ground-dwelling bird that is common in grassland, woodland and open agricultural country across northern Australia and southern New Guinea. It stands at about 1 m / 3’3” high, and its wingspan is around twice that length. The species is nomadic, flying to areas when food becomes plentiful, and capable of traveling long distances. They were once widespread and common to the open plains of Australia, but became rare in regions that have been used for farming. The bustard is omnivorous, mostly consuming the fruit or seed of plants, but also eating invertebrates such as crickets, grasshoppers, smaller mammals, birds and reptiles.
We saw many birds, one red kangaroo at the far end of his pen, one emu and then the main attraction: two dingoes named Mala and Digger.
The dingo is an ancient lineage of dog found in Australia. The dingo is a medium-sized canine that possesses a lean, hardy body adapted for speed, agility, and stamina. The dingo’s three main coat colorations are light ginger or tan, black and tan, or creamy white. The skull is wedge-shaped and appears large in proportion to the body. The dingo is closely related to the New Guinea singing dog: their lineage split early from the lineage that led to today’s domestic dogs, and can be traced back through Maritime Southeast Asia to Asia. The oldest remains of dingoes in Australia are around 3,500 years old. In 1999, a study of the maternal lineage through the use of mitochondrial DNA as a genetic marker indicates that the dingo and New Guinea singing dog developed at a time when human populations were more isolated from each other.
A dingo pack usually consists of a mated pair, their offspring from the current year, and sometimes offspring from the previous year.
The name “dingo” comes from the Dharug language used by the Indigenous Australians of the Sydney area. The first British colonists to arrive in Australia in 1788 noted “dingoes” living with indigenous Australians. The name was first recorded in 1789.
The dingo is regarded as a feral dog because it descended from domesticated ancestors. The dingo’s relationship with indigenous Australians is one of commensalism, in which two organisms live in close association, but do not depend on each other for survival. They both hunt and sleep together. The dingo is, therefore, comfortable enough around humans to associate with them, but is still capable of living independently.
After a short talk by a female ranger, a male ranger brought Digger out for a walk and we got to meet him. After Fran’s dog encounter in Mexico last year, she’s still a bit gun shy with unknown dogs and she took pictures while Digger greeted Doug:
Mala stayed behind in the pen and did a lot of wandering and then began to feel lonely and cry out in the unique howl that these dogs have:
This was, of course, the highlight of the visit and a great final exhibit to see.
For lots more photos of our time in Alice Springs click here.
Then it was westward to Standley Chasm about 50 km / 30 mi away. This was a beautiful drive with spectacular scenery of the MacDonnell mountain range:
and more:
Standley Chasm is a geological formation located in the Northern Territory. It lies within the West MacDonnell National Park. The Western Arrenrnte Aborignal people are its original owners; it is traditionally known as Angkerle Atwatye, meaning the Gap of Water. Standley Chasm is located in a reserve privately owned by the Iwupataka Land Trust. The cliff walls reach up to 80 m/ 262.5′ in height.
The first European name for the formation was Gall Springs after the third manager of Owen Springs Station which once held the title over this land. When used for pastoral purposes the chasm was a major watering site for cattle. It was renamed Standley Chasm in honour of the first school teacher in Alice Springs. The chasm is generally in shade for most of the day, but changes colour around noon when the sun is directly overhead, making this the most popular time of the day to visit.
It was about a 20 minute walk out to the chasm and it was quite worth it. It reminded us a bit of The Narrows in Zion NP but much shorter in length and there was very little water.
Views along the walk:
In the chasm:
The restrooms:
Heading east back towards Alice Springs, we next stopped at Simpsons Gap. This site was covered by the Northern Territory parks pass we’d purchased to go to Kings Canyon. (We bought the two week pass for $30 as we thought we’d go to 3 or 4 parks and at $10 a park, this was cheaper.)
Simpsons Gap is one of the gaps in the West MacDonnell Range in the Northern Territory. It is located 18 kilometres west from Alice Springs, on the Larapinta Trail. The gap is home to various plants and wildlife, including the black-footed rock wallaby. It is the site of a permanent waterhole.
It was getting pretty warm now but the sun was shining again today with no rain in sight. It was a short walk to the Gap and there was actually water but we saw no wildlife except a few birds. It was a pretty sight too.
We had one more stop to see today as we opted not to go to the gorge on the east side of Alice Springs. We returned to the Stuart Highway and went south nearly 80 km / 50 mi to the turn off to Rainbow Valley Conservation Area (also covered by the parks pass). Turns out it was a 22 km / 13 mi dirt road that had more sections of corrugation than we like but we made it both ways without much trouble but saw no wildlife until we got to the park (we did see cattle under a tree once).
Rainbow Valley Conservation Reserve is a protected area. The reserve was established in 1990 to protect the unique sandstone formations and the Aboriginal art, artifacts, and sacred natural objects within the around a large sandstone bluff. The sandstone layers in the main formation resemble the coloured stripes of a rainbow, with the red-orange hues of sandstone that is rich with iron creating a strong contrast with the lighter shaded sandstone that turns pale yellow or gold in the late day sun as it shines on the northwest-facing cliffs.
We got parked near the trail head to Mushroom Rock. Approaching the bluff we spotted a perentie climb into the rocks on the right side but we couldn’t get a photo fast enough. (there is one above from the reptile centre visit)
We continued to Mushroom Rock and then returned across the front of the bluff itself.
This was a very beautiful sandstone site with a large area in front that probably has water at certain times of the year but not now although we felt it soft underfoot in some places so perhaps this area received some of the rain we had Kings Canyon and in Alice Springs in the past few days.
Upon returning to the highway via the same dirt road, we drove short 15 km / 9.5 mi to Stuarts Well Roadhouse (truck stop) where we’d spent the night last week on the way north. We parked and took care of a few things before dinner and a pretty quiet cool enough evening.
You can click here if you want to see more photos the three parks.
