Trippin' round Oz: Barkly Homestead - Wycliffe Well

Our last stop in Queensland was at a petrol station in Camooweal. He we fuelled up and grab a pie each to tide us over until we reached our nightly stop, Barkly Homestead. We started to eat on the road but found it a little difficult so pulled up in a road side stop to finish off our pies. Luckily I bought the pies and that we decided to stop because Nigel and I looked up when we pull in a both laughed out loud. In front of us was the 'Welcome to the Northern Territory' sign. We would have crossed the border oblivious to where we were. Thank goodness I decided to get messy pies......

I'm thinking that we won't be travelling at this speed.

Our first night in the Territory was spent at the Barkly Homestead. We pulled into the servo to fill up for the second time that day and to book in for a nights stay. We pulled up in a spot far to close to the generator and went to bed with the constant humming of the engine. How annoying. Just a quick stay here. We were off again in the morning for our next stop.

We continued our drive via Three Ways and Tennant Creek were we found cheap fuel and expensive groceries. From here we continued another 100km to the Devils Marbles (Karlu Karlu). The kids had a ball climbing over the rocks and bolders and if Austin was allowed he would have climbed to the top of many of them. They are amazing how they are round and are just placed in clumps all over the area. You wonder how they really got there.....

Our stop over point here was at Wycliffe Well, the home of the UFO sighting. It was all decked out with UFO paraphernalia. We stayed her for a couple of nights so the kids could have a rest day and catch up on their journal and school work. While we were there we got to see 3 emu chicks hatch. The male emu is the one that sits on the nest and waits for them to hatch. He had been sitting of them for over 2 months. It is amazing how he will collect the eggs over a period of 3 weeks layed anywhere by the female and rolls them gently back to the nest. He then continues to look after them until they are around 6 months old. While we were looking at the emu chicks the female emu layed another egg next to the male and he promptly tucked it into his nest. How amazing is that.

We then drove another 400km to Alice Springs were we filled up with petrol, did a huge grocery shop and stayed a night before heading to our next stop, Mt Ebenezer.