TWENTYTHIRD DAY – SATURDAY 31ST JULY
Woke up to see the sun just coming up over the pebbles. Last night was very windy and this morning is quite chilly and clouds completely fill the sky. We left at 7.40 am south to Tennant Creek. Graeme wanted to be there as soon as we could so he could find a tyre place and possible some new tyres for the snail. Well! We were in luck. Bridgestone Tyres had a place and they had three for our van. We bought two new ones – one to replace the spare and one of the really old tyres got changed as well. We picked up a few supplies, filled our water tanks and fuel tank and off we went north up the Stuart Highway. Through Three Ways and on north through some amazing countryside of bushlands with almost every bush and ground cover flowering to some extent and some interesting rock formations. There of course were hundreds more ant hills which I’m sure some of them employ architect ants to design their amazing structures. We came across the wayside camp area where we were planning to stop but there were so many other campers there already there was pretty much no more room. A couple of other travellers stopped, looked and kept going and we decided to do the same. We hoped we would be able to find a quieter spot somewhere down the road. We drove past a sign that pointed west down a road which indicated there could be a spot to park so went and investigated. It was called ‘Newcastle Waters’ – also known as Marlinja which was an old historic town. There were a few pretty old buildings and a big statue of a drover, but the best thing was along the road to the town was a small wayside stop with no one there. So guess what? We decided to stop and it was ours! We are now camped here for the night and it has been lovely and quiet apart from a couple of cars and road trains passing earlier on their way to the big station called – Newcastle Waters. It has been pretty windy which is great for drying a few clothes.