15th July Alice Springs

 Kms today 210              Kms to date  4944

After a tasty brekkie cooked by Wendy, I took off to the  Tourist Office in town.  The West McDonnell Ranges looked the best option..  First I stopped at the Araluen Cultural Precinct to check out the Namatjiri paintings.  There were some painted by his children and grandchildren. Another room had models of women watching and playing baseball and a third had a large display of beanies submitted for a competition.

The style of painting made famous my Albert Namatjiri at Hermansberg

Interesting installation showing group of aboriginal women playing baseball.

One of the Beanies in the exhibition depicted the famous Drop Bear

                    

I rode at a brisk pace along Namatjiri Drive to Serpentine Gorge and a rather slower pace on the dirt access road    This was a place that I had not visited on my previous visits to Alice Springs.  The gorge was beautiful with a large pool of water blocking access to the back of the gorge.  Hundreds of little finches were drinking at the waters edge and then flying off in big groups, twittering all the while.

Serpentine Gorge pond.

Zebra Finches drinking at waters edge

A Grey Shrikethrush a famous songbird of the bush

I went back to the cultural centre for some lunch and because I wanted to buy one of the beanies for Lachlan.  He'll get it in a few weeks.  I was struck  down by hay fever and went home to get my Nasonex.  Kathy suffers as well and told me it was couch grass pollen.  

Spectacular hills of the West McDonnel Range

I washed the bike and oiled the chain ready for tomorrow.  I was getting tense about the trip and border closures and started to look at a direct route home through Adelaide.  I made some accommodation  bookings including the one at the Eldo Hotel Woomera that cheated me.

So now I have three options:

Go through WA on the original route as planned (I still have my WA entry pass);

Go through QLD and NSW on the assumption that Vic will open up to non-metropolitan NSW before I get to the border; and

Go straight home from Katherine down the Stuart Hwy through Adelaide.

I'll make a decision when I get into WA on the 25th July.  If that goes smoothly then the WA option looks the best.  If not, coming straight home looks most likely unless NSW pulls it's finger out and gets on  top of Covid before the end of July.

It turned out that none of these came to pass - but that's life on the road in Australia under Covid.