Day 5 ALGEBUCKINA TO CURTAIN SPRINGS Tassie to Darwin

One of my concerns was that the kids, especially the older boys would struggle to get up early because at times their life style at home is a long way from early nights and early starts but to my surprise the girls are the slow starters and the boys are 'keen as' in the mornings to start a new day!

So today we are up before sunrise getting some photos before breakfast and pack up.

We were soon enough on the road again heading towards Oodnadatta. Here are a few shots of the ever changing road conditions along this great stretch of road.

Before long we arrived at the town ship of Oodnadatta. The Plate family who were very much a part of bringing the masses to this area recently sold the road house and moved on I believe.

We fuelled up a little and made our way through the beautiful painted desert towards the Stuart Highway.

Some more pics of the sights along this end of the Oodnadatta track, including a perspective the kids get to see a lot of!

Did I mention dust? It is so dusty you get blinded when another vehicle is around.

Plenty of cattle out in these parts and they even have their own road crossings :)

We were soon back out on the highway and fuelled up properly at Marla. Diesel and food as it turns out.

Check out the dust falling off our wheels as we drove into the servo.

Once back out on the highway your going to see a lot of caravaners getting along at 70-80kph and also road trains being driven mad by the slow driving caravaners lol

We stopped at the border for the photo you must take and a gentleman suggested I had a broken CV or something in my front diff making a noise. So I had the good wife drive the Patrol around the car park while I listened, as it turned out I think it was only the gearbox chatter the gentleman heard....this model Patrol has a very large truck gear box which is quite noisy at the best of times.

The speed limit also increases which means nothing to us as we typically sit on 100-110kph at best.

Not long after the border crossing we turned off the main highway towards Uluru. We had planned on staying at Marla but we are still running half a day ahead of time so we pushed on and hoped to get a spot at Curtain Springs.

We had a quick stop at Mount Conner.

And late afternoon we arrived at Curtain Springs and found ourselves a nice grassy spot to set up for the night.

Curtain Springs is a working station but allows free camping, it also has meals, a bar and several birds including a friendly Emu that has no issues stepping inside peoples tents or vans!

After tea we hit the sack to the sound of a very inconsiderate persons generator rattling away most of the night...grrrrr