Day 7..

Day 7 The stop in Kings Canyon Resort was very comfortable, once the storm had finished trying to destroy my tent and forcing me to take it down and put it up again in the dark. I woke early and listened to the birds chatter and the campsite begin to hum with life from the other campers. Shocked to find the tent still standing I eventually got up and woke Rob, who was still dead to the world. We began packing up, with the story of the storm the night before. It seemed Rob was more aware of the rain than I'd been, managing to wring out his t-shirt that had been inside his swag with him. All material was removed from his swag and bundled into the car in a hope it dries out before night fall. Our first stop was petrol. At 209 cents per liter we both agreed to out as little as possible in and hope, Rob far more confident than I was with 100km of unsealed road and 150km of sealed road to get through before the next petrol stop. Our next stop was to be Stuarts well in a hope the petrol would be cheaper. The road back was part of the road we'd driven to get to Kings Canyon, and although I'd seen it on the drive in, the views were still breathtaking on the way back. It occurred to me on the drive back that Rob seems to get the smaller animals on the road when he is driving such as rabbits, lizards, emu's and Kangaroos where as I'd not really had any, until today. The drive was plagued by horses, cows and camels standing idly on the road, not just next to it. Managing to avoid all of them we made the unsealed road with a quarter of a tank left, by rough maths on the drive so far, about 100km of fuel. Somehow we made it through to the Stuart highway not even onto the red light. A quick drive up and we found our intended petrol station. Again, prices were near 200 cents per liter so we put a tiny 15 liters in and pushed on to Alice Springs hopeful that they would at least be cheaper. On arriving we promptly made our way to McDonald's, again. It seems I am eating more McDonald's than I've ever done before. Once again we both had an alternative motive - internet, our life line to the world. With food in hand and internet on our phones we caught up with a little of what was happening in the world, most importantly the emails sent to us from Canada about work and the falling snow. Once caught up on the important stuff and some blog updates we set off again. We needed to replace the tyre Rob had destroyed the previous day. Google gave us a few recommendations as to where to go and where it was in relation to us. While travelling around Alice Springs you notice a lot of aboriginal folk wondering around or just Sat out in groups under any shade they could find. Our first stop took us to a garage who promptly advised us that the tyres are no longer made and it would be some $240 to get a replacement. So on we went. The second place advised us something similar but that it would be $170. However they did recommend a wreckies on the otherwise of town that had managed to source a tyre for someone else. Needless to say we headed on over. Managing to pick the tyre up fitted for $120 we returned to our second stop for balancing. While this was being done we headed into town to try get bits sorted. Rob needed to lift some money having managed to snap the corner of his debt card and we wanted to find an internet cafe to work our the next stages of our journey and if we were to bother going to palm valley. We are running out of km's until we need another service. 2200km to travel with 2200km left before we needed a service. It was set, we'd just head north and on to Cairns. We found Coles and grabbed the food we would need for our optimistic 3 days travelling. Leaving an hour later than we had hoped we were finally on our way. With the sun set lighting the sky in a darkening red we made our way north up the Stuart having to revise where to stop again as Google has towns on it we don't on our map and haven't see signs for. As we made our way north both Rob and I began to be able to smell wood fire. We both searched and reached for the fire with no luck until I eventually noticed small plumes of smoke rising from the road side - the bush was in fire in several places along the road side. As night set in and the light completely faded away we realised again our revised revised stop of Devils Marbles was too optimistic as well. We stopped in at the next roadside layby and set up our camp for the night. Once again my tent was plagued by the wind pulling the poles out of the already broken fittings. I do have to wonder how much longer the tent will hold on before I need to find some kind of replacement.