Aug 16

Devil’s Marbles

Our next stop is going to be Devil’s Marbles, a collection of boulders best seen in sunset or sunrise. It is apparently a busy camping surrounded by the boulders and you’re advised to arrive early. It being 320 km from Barkly’s, we decide to leave early. So at 8.30 we’re on the road, heading west first and encounter a nice farewell from Barkly’s.

There’s 200 km of the same type of scenery and road, so not much to tell apart from every once in a while we see yellow balls along the side of the road. No idea what it is?
Then we get the option to either take fuel at the Three Way point or continue to Tennant Creek. We decide that we’re brave with our tank size and continue. That decision in the end saved us $0.25 per liter as diesel at the roadhouse is $1.93 and the BP in Tennant Creek charges $1.68 which is still about $0.20 cents higher than the bigger cities. Hey, remember, I still have Dutch character flaws and love a ‘bargain’.

We stop in town to stretch the legs and make a coffee but decide to move on soon again. There is no nice spot to stop, fields are bare or burnt with broken glass and chicken bones. It seems that there are several aboriginal communities around town and by the tone of the graffiti there’s not a lot of harmony between aborigines and others. The only thing to remember town by is a life size aboriginal mural.

So we make a cuppa and move on, south this time. The road here is endless too.

I have to make an adjustment of my view of Northern Terrestrials. Not everyone is smarter. The cows for instance seem to be the only road kill and none of them recent. All we see is hides with some bones and no bird seems interested. Also, where in Queensland there are cattle grids (metal vertical bars too wide for animals to cross) in the road every couple of 100 km’s or so with fence on either side to keep cattle within the property. This is well sign posted. In Northern Territory they seem to have the same signs and fences but instead the cows are tricked by just painting white lines on the road instead of the metal grid. I have no idea if the cows fall for it but it is definitely more friendly for the traffic.

The road provides a bit more variety and the red mountain ridge is mesmerizing. Not sure that shows the same in a picture though.

Then we arrive at the Devil’s Marbles turnoff, it’s a mighty sight, these massive red boulders. apparently they are marble that over thousands of years are broken off from a marble layer of rock after small cracks occurred from the hot sun during the day and the cold at night, then water seeped in and split the rock. Then erosion rounded off the broken parts and boulders remained. The red is really just engrained dust as broken off bits are grey inside.

We arrived early, so had time for a walk, for some art (Marjo had enough inspiration here) and some maintenance (re-attaching the magnets to the aluminium frame of the fly screens). I might have dozed for a bit.

Then we did a walk and saw the marbles up close, they get more enchanting the later it gets with the sun turning red.

Then we suddenly see many Dotti’s! Oh no, there are dingo’s here and they are not shy!

It shows that these dingo’s are well used to campers and come very close to look for food.

We talk to a late twenties camping party of three from the UK traveling in a small car about their trip and they are in a hurry to get on, want to do Darwin in a day and then move on. Darwin is about 800 km from here but good luck to them.
We also learn from Peter who travels alone in a 4WD ute and sleeps on the top (lucky for him he’s only 5 foot so he can fit. For me it would be claustrophoby galore. The principle of just one 4WD vehicle has merits though. Food for thought.
He also recommends Darwin on Thursday (there are beach markets) and otherwise don’t bother with it. Litchfield, which we’re planning to do after we have returned back up north. And finally take the Tunnel Creek road between the Savannah Way and Deep River road. Keep tuned for a later post on that one.