Alice Springs Day 7

Now hang on, we are not meant to be here for day 7! Hopefully it is our last day, not that we dislike Alice Springs that much but we just want to get on our way.

After reviewing our plans, we have decided to make some changes to our destinations. One thing that has really become apparent to us is that Chels and Josh have seen little about the true Aboriginal culture and currently have a slightly distorted view of this race and we need to do something about it.

We have found a place called Manyallaluk where we are able to go in for the day and experience the culture first hand and so have put it into our itinerary. We will stay there one night, have a full day to experience the culture as part of a tour, and then travel onto Katherine at the end of the day. Not what we had planned but now very important.

This means that we now have to long days in the car ahead of us in order to catch up and be ready for this day, in actual fact we will get ahead of our original plans but it pays to be a little flexible. We will now travel to Mataranka in two days instead of four and then move on from there.

As we were assured we would have the car that afternoon, we started packing up and getting ready for the next stage of the journey. Alice Springs to Darwin via a few places.

Off to the shops to stock up with food until Katherine, it is much cheaper to do it this way as well as washing etc to make sure we would be ready to go the next morning.

After hearing nothing about the car, I rang at about 4:30pm to be advised that the car would now not be ready until the following day, maybe by lunchtime. Of course, I was not happy with this and said that I had been advised it was to be ready by now. What can you do? I needed the car but of course it had to be in perfect condition before we could continue.

Amazingly, no more than ten minutes later I was called to be advised that the car was ready! I was happy, amazed and concerned all at the same time.

How could it go from tomorrow lunchtime to being ready in ten minutes? I was advised that there was a miscommunication at there end and my car had been worked on, tested and was now ready to be picked up. Sure enough, I was picked up and taken to collect my car and it was sitting there waiting for me, I was told all tested and ready. After paying the bill (OUCH!) I was able to drive away and go back and start loading the bits and pieces.

As a bit of interest, the part arrived from Sydney in less than twenty-four hours, it then took twenty-one hours to travel from one end of town to the other! Amazing as this is a distance of under twenty kilometers!