On a bicycle made for two...

Oddly we found ourselves discovering that it was currently hotter back home in the UK than in the central outback of Australia, who’d have thought! Our evening temperatures had been dropping the closer we got to the centre of Australia and we were now experiencing almost freezing temperatures at night with the mercury climbing to around the mid to late twenties during the day, having said that it is winter over here. Alice Springs wasn’t offering much when it came to free amenities. Forget free showers, you have to pay to use the toilets! Added to that there’s no free drinking water tap to fill up your van and the nearest free camp is a long way out of town, so we stayed two nights. This was enough to prep and stock up for our 10-12 day Red Centre Way (RCW) pilgrimage. Heading west from Alice Springs, the first area of interest is the West MacDonnell ranges. We spend three days exploring the area, walking numerous trails through ochre pits, spectacular gorges and

Taking our sign posted, impromptu short cut had meant that the rest of our planned route had altered slightly, no longer were we heading south to Boulia and west from Boulia to Alice Springs, in fact Boulia had been ditched entirely. Two things Boulia is known for are the Min Min lights (eerie, unexplained lights sometimes spotted around the area, coincidentally also spotted in Mickley, UK) and the annual camel racing championships. L and I were unsure if it would be cool to see the min min lights whilst driving in the outback, or if such a spectacle would scare the pair of us senseless, we never got to find out. We thought the novelty of watching the camel races would be highly entertaining however with the races still a couple of weekends off, we’d have missed the event regardless. Our gravel road short cut wasn’t proving overly bumpy and the landscape was flat for as far as the eye could see in all directions. We were surprised to discover that our first human contact on this

We’d divided our route to Alice Springs into 4 stages: Stage 1. A short drive south (54 miles) back to Townsville on the A1 Bruce highway. We’d originally bypassed the coastal city of Townsville on our way north to Ingham. Neither L or myself were expecting any great wonders from Townsville itself but when we rocked up we were both pleasantly surprised. The beach front is stunning and there are some great walks to various look out points. We’d heard Magnetic Island, a 20 minute ferry trip from the harbour is great for beaches and snorkelling, but upon seeing what the town had to offer we opted to stay on the mainland, after all we’d seen a lot of amazing beaches and islands on our trip so far. We stayed at a free-camp just outside of Townsville, to give us more time to explore and check out the G.B.R reef aquarium and turtle hospital. We’d counted our visit to Reef HQ, the world’s largest coral reef aquarium, as our third and final G.B.R experience, this was because the weat