On May 28th, we got up early and continued south along the Stuart Highway towards Alice Springs. Our first stop of the day was at The Devil's Marbles, a strange rock formation in the middle of the desert. Formed by millions of years of weathering, the field of 'marbles' stretches as far as the eye can see. After plenty of photo opportunities, we were back on the road until we got to the Wycliffe Well roadhouse - Australia's UFO capital - a bizarre little place full of extra-terrestrial memorabilia.
After that, it was on to Barrow Creek Telegraph Station, an example of what made the Stuart Highway as important as it was. Before Adelaide was linked with Darwin, messages took weeks to be delivered back to Britain, but with the telegraph line that joined the north and south of the country, this was reduced to days. Every few hundred miles, a telegraph station was built next to the line as a repeater station, with a few men manning and maintaining each. The sheer isolation and dangers of such a job must have been incredible.
Back on the bus, our driver spotted a parked road train, so we promptly pulled over and jumped out to take a few photos. It's pretty rare to see them stopped anywhere because it takes them half an hour to get back up to speed again, so we were especially lucky. Road trains are usually preferred to the rail link that now runs from Adelaide to Darwin because they can transport goods by road along the same route faster than by rail. Whether it's a job that any of us would contemplate doing is another matter!
Lunch was at an art gallery in Ti Tree, not far north of Alice. Although it seems like another little settlement on the never-ending Stuart Highway, this one has a somewhat infamous past. It was where Peter Falconio and his girlfriend were attacked in 2001, leading to his death while she escaped, with the killer recently put away for 28 years. We only found that out after we'd left town!
Our penultimate stop of the day was at the Tropic of Capricorn, before we arrived in Alice Springs at about 6pm that evening. A few of us checked into the YHA there and we met up later for a few drinks to end our Darwin to Alice trip.
