We were blessed with a very comfortable night and sleep! And also blessed with a beautiful morning, a pretty sunrise and the opportunity to get some great shots of the 17 metre high statue called ‘Anmatjere Man’, which is based on a traditional man from the local Anmatjere tribe. Built by Alice Springs local, Mark Egan, the statue was built in 12 months, weighs about nine tonne, was erected in December 2005 and stands proudly on a hill overlooking Aileron and the surrounding region. The Anmatjere people have named the sculpture after Charlie Quartpot Ngwarray, who once lived in this area — he was a leader and an important man, a rainmaker. It certainly is an imposing sight - you can see it from the highway and it is located on a hill just at the back of the roadhouse.
It’s not hard to be the last to leave when you are only one of 3 campers. Apparently, according to a lady travelling by herself with a rooftop tent, this camp was booked out a couple of weeks ago. It is hard to believe how that might look and how easy it would be to get in and out. It is however easy to believe that many of these caravan parks were set up in a past life when vans were smaller and that they didn’t really re-design to accommodate for the bigger vans that we see more and more on the road. Ours is 19 feet long and is a big enough challenge at times.
It was unfortunate that the art gallery next door wasn’t open by the time we left, but we did stop to take some photos of the other giant statue before heading off from Aileron. I did have a laugh when reading some of the feedback on Aileron as a stopover destination – in particular the comment that “the statue was anatomically correct resulting in an interesting conversation with our children on leaving the site”.
There are many historic markers along the way in tribute to explorers, developers and workers. Some are interesting, some a little surprising and some just a bit disturbing like one at Barrow Creek Telegraph Station remembering two men who were, and I quote, “killed by native savages”. Sometimes records of history say more about the people recording them than the actual events that occurred.
On one such stop, we pulled in to the rest area and a 4wd camper moved up the end of the parking area as we were driving in to the parking spaces. A man got out of the vehicle carrying a roll of toilet paper and started to walk off into the scrub. I say scrub but really it was little better than some salt bushes and a few weedy trees. Obviously second guessing his choice of disposal site, he (let’s call him Mr Poopoo) turned around and got back into the vehicle and drove off up the highway.
Having taken photos and moved on ourselves – we came across the next historic marker just down the road and pulled in. Once again here was Mr Poopoo’s vehicle parked in the rest area and he appeared again from the bush, this time adjusting his pants, obviously having achieved his desired outcome this time without an audience. The sad part was there had been a toilet stop just up the road before the last rest area and although Shane was keen to give him the benefit of the doubt on an urgent call of nature – as I pointed out – it couldn’t have been THAT urgent to be able to leave the first location and go to a second.
Our next stop was the Barrow Creek Telegraph Station. Barrow Creek was chosen as a site for an Overland Telegraph morse repeater station in 1871 and the station was officially opened in 1872. It was one of 15 such repeater stations on a network traversing Australia and linking to Europe, providing essential communication services. A manned repeater station in newer buildings remained in operation until at least the 1970s. There was also a post office and telephone exchange servicing local cattle stations. The original Telegraph Station has been preserved and is now a monument to the troubles which beset the early days of the Territory, a monument that, much to my surprise, you can now walk through. We spent a bit of time wandering through the various buildings/rooms, and low and behold there was Mr Poopoo but we discovered that Mrs Poopoo was also in the vehicle. As we wandered around and into the station, Mrs P began taking photos of us on her phone. I’m still shaking my head over that one.
Barrow Creek of course is probably also famous for being the closest town to the location of the murder of Peter Falconio just on 18 years ago, and the subsequent trial. The scene of the crime was 13 kilometres to the north of Barrow Creek and was allegedly the inspiration for the film Wolf Creek.
We arrived at our destination – the Devils Marbles Hotel – just after 1.00pm and finally located the site assigned to us. Hard to find because it wasn’t a marked site and the power supply consisted of an extension cord slung over the wall of the camp kitchen. Any shaded sites were well occupied, the ground merely course grey gravel and shortly after we arrived another couple advised they had been asked to park next to us in a spot so narrow that there wasn’t even room for their awning. If we hadn’t already paid for the site I probably would have agreed with Shane that we should just pack up and move back down the road to Wycliffe Well. We stayed there on our last trip and even though the amenities were rustic, the grass was green, trees plentiful and you had access to water. In an effort to mix up our trip a little this time we had settled on DMH due to its slightly closer location to the Devils Marbles. Chalk that one up to experience.
Given it was pretty warm and I was pretty tired, Shane ventured out to Karlu Karlu (the Devils Marbles) on his own to take some sunset shots, while I just took a quick stroll out to the front of the hotel to catch my own sunset pictures.
289 km
Total - 4,021 km
Top today 26°c - expecting overnight 12°c
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