Heading away from the rock, we had a few more hours to drive before arriving at our next destination.

On the way we started seeing these. Have you ever seen a termite mound this size? This was by no means the smallest we saw, and we figured that if that's the size of the houses the ants live in, then we didn't want to meet up with any of the inhabitants!

We all afternoon and eventually made it to Alice Springs. We had a bit of a mooch, and decided that nice though the town looked, we'd head out the next morning and try to get out to the coast sooner rather than later.
We found a place to stay, and then went to the main strip to get something to eat. Deciding to treat ourselves we plumped for the Drovers Delight. It offered us a platter of kangaroo, crocodile, emu and camal. It was lovely, and washed down well with some local beer aswell! hurrah for pubs!

It's a little known fact that when you arrive in Australia customs officers allocate 4 flies to pester you until you leave. Some lucky swines must have dodged theirs, as me and D were being harrassed by more than our fair share of the little sods, and we were desperate to get out to some sea breezes and leave the flies behind :oP
We drove long and hard the next day through scenery of absolutely nothing whatsoever. The road kill amount by now had increased to thousands of locusts, flies, we winged a bird (no pun intended - ok, maybe a little pun intended, but it seemed ok because it flew off. The wingmirror took most of the impact) and flattened a few gheko type things. I think we passed a couple of cards during the drive. That's about it really. I have to say the outback is not the most exciting place to be. Interesting for the first day or so, it then gets kind of dull. Still - if you have no aircon and it's in the 40's, it's the place to be :oP Besides it'd be rude to come down under and not go.

There are some interesting things out there - for example the tropic of Capricorn. We were officially in the tropics!

Deciding to risk a shortcut, we headed off on a new and interesting route. Eventually we came to this sign. The road ended abrubtly and turned into more of a track than a road. We tried it for a while, but poor old TC is really not an off road car, so we turned around and headed back to the main road.
Back on the main route we came to this road sign. Wycliff Well is essentially a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. It was fab to stop and take some pics though:
check out what they've done to get people to stop:
pic 1, pic 2.
Towards the end of the day we got to the Devils Marbles. Another rock romation similar to Ulhuru and The Olgas. Stunning.