Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary

After we left Ti-Tree it was a 350km drive along a dirt road via Yuendumu to Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary which is owned and operated by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy.

Even though we were travelling along the Stuart Highway, north to south, there is still only mobile phone service either in Aboriginal Communities, a roadhouse, or at these Telstra hot spots.

You sit your phone on the stand and magically there's service!

Road trains are common out here - this one hauling cattle

We needed fuel before heading into Newhaven, so stopped at the Aboriginal community of Yuendumu. It may have been a
"dry" community, but even still there was a lot of rubbish just lying around. A "Tidy Town" it wasn't!

Quite often out here, the petrol bowsers are caged

The family running the local store were of Asian heritage from Tasmania and had been in Yuendumu for 4 weeks. We asked the son who was filling our car for directions to Newhaven as there weren't any road signs. He informed us that he hadn't been anywhere other than in their shop the whole time they'd been here! So he wasn't much help to our need for directions!  We still haven't worked out why a family of 4 would move from Tasmania to Yuendumu.  Talk about a tree change!

So we headed off in the direction we thought Newhaven would be.  After all, we have the latest and most detailed Hema map there is, what could go wrong?

We finally found the road we needed to be on after a couple of laps around town, despite road works blocking every exit. At least the drives around town showed us a few interesting sights of what's going on in the side streets :)

We still had a little phone service, and at the 19km mark Google Maps told us that we needed to take a tiny track to the left, whereas the main road straight ahead was a 4 lane red dirt highway.

So with some caution we went straight ahead and enjoyed this major road. According to our map there were several opportunities to turn left to Newhaven. We soon passed a Distance Marker that stated "N 130kms". We were impressed that Newhaven had its own distance markers and they were even a little big bigger than normal. Convinced we were on the right road we continued on.

In about 80kms the Toyota GPS told us we needed to turn left. Now the Toyota GPS isn't the most reliable instrument, so we continued on a bit, but the "highway" had quickly started to deteriorate. So it was time to take a closer look at where we were.

It turns out that N was for Nyirrpi, an Aboriginal community about 190kms from Yuendumu and wasn't Newhaven at all. So we were a bit off-track by then.

Turning around we confirmed that, yes, the 3 roads on the map to Newhaven didn't exist. We've checked other maps since, and some of these roads are shown as tracks (not roads), but we can confirm no roads or tracks exist!

It was late and almost dark, and we knew were weren't going to make it all the way back to Yuendumu and into Newhaven that night.  So we decided to look for a safe place to free camp. Friday and Saturday nights are not ideal times to be camping anywhere near local communities, especially if alcohol is available. Just because they are "dry" communities, doesn't mean they don't have access to alcohol.  Being a Saturday night we didn't want to be anywhere too obvious.

We were about to pull off into a nicely hidden track when a white ute rattled past us. A couple of minutes later they had turned around and came back. 3 older Aboriginal men assured us that we couldn't get to Newhaven without either going to Nyirrpi or back to Yuendumu, and we were about in the middle of these two places.

The strange thing was these guys then drove off in the direction they had come from, turning around where we were. So where did they see us? We hadn't passed a thing - not a town, car or person since leaving Yuendumu. But they had come out to make sure we were ok and not lost. It's nice to be able to trust strangers especially in the middle of nowhere, and these guys certainly gave us useful information.

We stayed the night where we were, and the next day found the road to Papunya which had to cross over the correct main road to Newhaven. 

It wasn't a big road, but it was quite good, but narrow. We came across an abandoned van on the way, as you do out these parts. Normally they aren't in the middle of the road! We did check for occupants, but it was empty inside.

We definitely weren't the first car that had to squeeze past this van

The view from this drive was amazing.

We finally arrived at Newhaven, which had excellent camping facilities and ticked all the boxes.  3 of the campsites had water taps for vans to connect up to, and firewood supplied each day. We had all the water we wanted, and a roaring fire each night.

The first night we were there on our own, and the workers at the Wildlife Conservancy about 1 km away.

Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary is 262,000 hectares (2,620 square kms, 1,012 square miles) so it's not small.

It's also the site of the planet’s largest feral cat eradication project, the first stage which we saw is 9,400 hectares. Normally you're not able to see the fence, but Jayne had sponsored some of the construction, so we were able to go out with one of the rangers (Diane) working there.  Within the fence are threatened little Aussie mammals, safe from feral cats, foxes and wild dogs.  The fence is electrified and the entire 45 km length is checked twice every day for any damage.  Diane told us that recently 2 bull camels were fighting outside the fence, and had accidentally fallen against and broken through the fencing, which needed to be repaired asap. 

One of the Rangers took us out to get a close look at it

Diane and Jayne at the fence entrance

From the top of the hill next to the camp ground we got a good overview of the fence.

The bird life there is just amazing.  We aren't "twitchers" (obsessed bird watchers) but we have a bird book in the caravan and loved the display put on here.

So many Budgies

Major Mitchell Cockatoos came in for a drink at the water tub in the afternoons

We did the Lakes Drive, passing the airport on the way. We tried to get the Landcruiser to take off, without success.

Finding a nice spot for morning tea proved to be tricky. So we just stopped in the middle of the road, as you do out here!

Lake Bennett - the largest of the salt lakes at Newhaven

On the way to Alice Springs we had to stop for a wild camel in the middle of the road. He wandered off into the bush and waited there so we could get a photo. 

Humpy

Alice Springs

Alice is the place for getting things repaired and serviced. Fortunately we didn't have anything that needed repairing, but certainly many others here did.

We did get the car and van serviced while we were here, having booked these in while we were in Kununurra weeks ago. You need to book well in advance around these parts because there are so many people travelling this year.

We also got a slow leaking tyre fixed. The shop who did this normally has a staff of 7, but they only have 2 for the last 3 months. Everywhere here are advertising for staff, the cafes, pubs, shops & workshops. If you want work, come to Alice.

We haven't ridden our bikes for ages, but we had a chance here, so rode to the Araluen Arts Centre.  We were lucky to be there during 3 exhibitions. 

Apmere-werne apetye-arlpaye… Amengkwerne Softball, an exhibition by former softball team players, celebrating the story of the Amengkwerne (Amoonguna) softball teams.

The exhibition, comprising quirky little mâché figures playing and watching softball.

And the Alice Springs Beanie Festival. So many incredible beanies made by very talented people.

This one would be ideal to keep the flies away

Now all Australians know we have very dangerous "drop-bears" here. But what do they really look like?

Well, here are two possibilities.

Which one is more accurate?

We had several hours to kill while the van was being serviced, so being the "new-age" guy I am, I joined Jayne in a pedicure.

They have a Indian Food Van here at the Big4 Caravan Park in Alice. So we thought we would give that a go for dinner.

It was actually very disappointing and gave food trucks a bad name. A jar of butter chicken sauce and some chicken thrown together and heated in a microwave would have tasted better and had more chicken in it!  It proves that the best thing to buy in the outback is definitely a schnitzel or parmigiana.

While in Alice we did some shopping at Woolies, including buying spray deodorant, but because it can be sniffed, you can only buy it here once a staff member has unlocked the cage:

Driving into Alice we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, so we're no longer in the tropics.

We could tell that this morning when it was 2°C, very cold. Yet another $15 heater from Bunnings saved us from certain frost bite last night!

But we cross over back into Tropics when we head north from Alice on our way home.

Sydney is still in Covid lockdown, and it doesn't look like they will come out of it soon. So not much point in coming home by end of July. However we miss our kids and grandkids. This is hard.