Alice Springs to Townsville 30/4 - 3/5

We made a 4 day 2200km drive from the centre of Australia, Alice Springs to the North Queensland Coast. Day 1 saw us drive to just north of Tennant Creek. Here is one of the original telegraph stations at Barrow Creek. It was near here that Peter Falconio went missing in 2001.



We made a brief stop at Wycliffe Well, the UFO hotspot of Australia where we bumped into these fellow travellers.



Day 2 saw a 650km drive to Mount Isa and back to Queensland, and that's when our worst nightmare began. We got within 100km of Mt. Isa when the temperature guage started rising. We pulled in at a rest area and let the car cool down for a while. When we came to start it the battery was flat. We presumed it was because the caravan was still attached. We were about to ring the breakdown service as we had a phone signal, when a man pulled into the rest area to see if we were ok. He was quite strange and took ages rummaging around in his boot for jump leads, which made us a little nervous. We eventually got a jump start and started driving again. We only got about 5km down the road and the car was gradually slowing down and we couldn't accelerate. The temperature guage was rising again. We managed to drag ourselves around some bends and over a bridge before coming to a standstill still halfway on the road.

This time we had no phone signal, we were fearful of the large roadtrains not seeing us in time (we put out a warning triangle), the battery was flat and the car was dead. We were going to have to flag someone down for help. No one passed us in half an hour and the sun was beginning to set, by which time we started to get a bit worried that we might have to spend the night there on the roadside. Eventually two cars passed us and one stopped. He had no phone signal nor jump leads. We waved another van to stop. He had a working phone but took a look at the car and identified that the fan belt had gone. Luckily we had purchased a spare months ago and the man was a mining mechanic. He offered to fit it for us which took him about an hour and he would take no money from us for his work. The other man who had stopped followed us back for part of the remaining distance to check that we were OK. We are very grateful to both of these men who stopped in their own time to help a pair of stranded strangers in the middle of the outback.



We arrived into Mt. Isa in the dark, both very tired but extremely relieved to be there after an eventful day. Next day we carried on the journey passing through dinosaur country. This is Kronosaurus Korner in Richmond. The area is rich in dinosaur fossils as it used to be part of the Inland Sea, the Great Artesian Basin.



Most of the day featured long, straight roads with flat scenery. It was quite monotonous.



We arrived in Hughenden also on the dinosaur trail in plenty of time to see the sunset.



Day 4 of the long trip saw us pass through some pretty rural towns. The scenery finally changed as we passed over the Great Dividing Range and into tropical Queensland.