Friday 17^th October

We enjoyed a lie in this morning, followed by a large breakfast and then relaxed until our transfer to the airport at 3pm. The two hour flight was uneventful but when we picked up our hire car discovered it was a massive land cruiser (legally we require 4WD for where we are going) which was a bit scary. Iain managed okay though and we found  our B & B without any problem and received a lovely welcome from Linda. It is a lovely place but on the main road so rather a lot of traffic noise that we are unused to!

Thursday 16^th October

Today we were up at 5am to make a brew, strike camp and continue on another bumpy road to meet a local woman with both settler and aboriginal connections who had lived at Oak Valley for thirty years. Her family has the lease on the cattle station and the surrounding land and she has a wide aboriginal family as well. She gave us fascinating insights into the life of both white settlers and her aboriginal relatives. She took us on a walk showing us bush tucker and medicinal plants and showed us Erwinga art site (looked relatively recent) and a very ancient rock etching depicting a map of the area with waterholes etc. (probably about 20,000 years old).

After a picnic lunch we continued on our way back to Alice Springs and our B & B. Margaret and Alf made us chicken curry for dinner and their next door neighbours came around with tuna pasta bake so we all had some of everything!