As predicted there were no cancellations, so our well oiled gear transfer team dragged themselves reluctantly away from the novelty of watching TV in the cabin to load up and setup a powered site for the night.
The ensuite tent made it’s first appearance as our coolroom housing the Engels and our little 18yo 3man tent from European backpacking days was dusted off as the kids’ house for the night. Lil and I visited the trailer at the mechanics and met the very colourful Craig and Joe. We discussed the very poor after sales service of Market Direct Campers and agreed on some different names for their business acronym. We packed the mattress for mummy and daddy’s back of the car setup for the evening and were finally reunited with our toothbrushes!
We spent the next few hours at Aruluen Cultural Centre, a few galleries with some Namatjira paintings featured as well as some cool exhibitions. Best one was a table of palm impressions where the artist had approached the people in her community with little pieces of clay and made an impression of their hands. There was an impressive museum about meteorites and basically a history of the earth throughout the different geological eras featuring fossils and models from the region. We could have spent a lot more time there but Stu in fine form and wanting to visit the plane museum. Pretty cool getting to sit inside a 1950’s passenger plane with a doco from the era of a female airpost pilot. And being asked to extinguish our cigarettes before landing! Kids got to have a go on the flight simulator which they enjoyed crashing several times each to the instructor’s dismay.
A quick trip back into Todd Mall to check out ‘mummy’s painting’ at Talipa and putting a hold on it till Monday was pretty exciting- this is proving to be an expensive week’s stopover in Alice?!
Matty and I proceeded to drink as much as we could to improve the prospect of sleeping in the car, kids excited at sleeping in tent, slightly more room than trailer but not much....