Monday, 27 April 2026
This morning the truck went to the doctor. Although there haven’t been anymore ‘Check Engine’ lights come on, when Bernie was concerned about it last week, he was proactive and booked the truck in for a check up here in Alice Springs today. Just so that we can spend another nine weeks on the road, feeling more confident with our vehicle.
We arrived at Centralian Motors, the local Isuzu dealership, just after 8.00am to drop the car off. The staff were lovely and we had the foreman telling us that the particulate filter ‘thing’ is a known problem in Isuzus made in the year ours was, and that it was definitely something to check and rectify sooner than later. He said they would force some burns, to make sure the the filter was cleaned out properly, and hope that it didn’t need to be replaced, because that would not be under warranty and would be expensive. Fingers crossed then!
They confirmed that they would need the truck for most of the day and we had planned to catch a taxi to the botanic gardens, then walk into town to do the Heritage Walk. Imagine our surprise and delight when they handed over the keys to a courtesy car without us having asked for it or booked it. Armed with the keys to a Suzuki Swift (much smaller than the truck!), our cameras and water bottles, we headed off for some sightseeing around the Alice.
As we were about to drive past Anzac Hill again, we decided that we might as well take the loaner car up to the top. We’ve been past several times and each time we have said that we should drive up to checkout the view before we leave Alice Springs. It’s a very small hill and we imagined that it must’ve been quite crowded on Saturday when ANZAC Day was being celebrated. It was nice to visit while all the wreaths that had been placed on Saturday were still fresh.
After this brief side trip, we continued to the Olive Pink Botanic Garden where you are asked to ‘donate’ $10.00 for entry and a guide book. The gardens were founded in 1956 as the Australian Arid Regions Native Flora Reserve and the first Curator was Olive Muriel Pink. She lived in the garden from 1956 until her death in 1975 aged 91. The interpretative boards described her as an amazing woman who made a life for herself in the Outback pursuing her passions for art, botany and anthropology. She was an early advocate for the Aboriginal people, pursuing social justice issues and holding the belief they should have the right to self-determination and be free to live in their tribal manner. Her opinions were not well-received by government nor other anthropologists of the day.
With our donation made, we headed of on the Hill Walk which is also known as the Arrernte Trail. At the start of the walk there was a sign saying that there are black-footed rock wallabies that live on the hill but we were not optimistic about seeing any. How wrong we were! Never mind the flora, I was more than happy to have paid $10.00 to see the rock wallabies. After we had seen a couple we were happy, but we kept on spotting them, relaxing in the shade, as we moved quietly around the top of the hill. My only concern was that you need to move quietly so as not to startle the rock wallabies BUT you sort of want to be stomping around to scare the snakes away, ha, ha. Happy to report though, we still haven’t seen a snake.
Back at the bottom of the hill, we continued to explore the gardens completing walks through the Mulga Woodlands, the Wattle Walk and the Mallee & Senna Walk. We even spotted another wallaby in this lower part of the garden. And birds and butterflies aplenty. There was one gum tree that was surrounded by butterflies, even though it did not appear to be flowering. There was definitely something about it that was attracting them.
Before leaving the gardens, we decided to support the café and treat ourselves to some morning tea. We don’t usually do morning tea but today we shared a lemon tart and accompanied it with a cappuccino (me) and a Coke Zero (Bernie). While we sat in the café garden the yellow-throated miners and Australian ringneck parrots watched us from the nearby trees.
We drove from the gardens into the town centre, parking the car in a parking area on Leichhardt Terrace, beside the Todd River. We took a couple of photos of the (currently dry) river just to have a photo of Alice Spring’s famous Todd River. From there we walked to Todd Mall. OMG, what a mess it was with all the paving ripped up and surrounded by temporary fencing. We wondered if it had fallen victim to the rain event early in April but soon noted that there were signs on the temporary fencing asking for patience while a rejuvenation project is completed.
Our first stop on the Heritage Walk was at the John Flynn Memorial Uniting Church, opened in 1956 as a memorial to Reverend John Flynn. Stop 2 was Adelaide House, which was designed by Reverend Flynn and completed in 1926. It served as the only medical centre for the region until 1939. Our guide said that it housed a superb exhibition of Alice Springs history but to us it looked … derelict. We wandered around the corner to The Residency. Built in 1928, it housed the first Government Resident of Central Australia during a brief period of self-government in the region and Queen Elizabeth II stayed there in 1963.
We arrived at the Old Hartley Street School, which was opened in 1930 as the first purpose-built government school in Alice Springs. This is a National Trust property and it was supposed to be open between 10.30am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday. We were going to go in to see its collection that allows visitors to experience a classroom circa 1960s but, it was all locked up. An apologetic sign on the door advised visitors that if the building was closed at a time it was advertised as open, it was because the rostered volunteer was unavailable.
This concluded our short tour of the Historic Precinct so it was time to find some lunch. Bernie had spied a promising looking café in a lane of Todd Mall. We re-traced our steps and found Page 27 Café in a laneway filled with potted plants. A lovely little oasis after coming in from the construction zone that is currently disfiguring Todd Mall. After my disappointing ‘healthy’ lunch yesterday, it was bacon all the way today with a BLAT each. Very heavy on the bacon, light on the tomato. Yum.
Now, when we arrived on Friday, I said to Bernie, I wonder if The Ghan will be in town while we are?? I Googled it and, as luck would have it, The Ghan was due in today at 1.45pm. We hadn’t thought about it much more, because we thought we were going to be without wheels and it might be difficult to get to the train station on foot. Bernie checked its schedule again and found that it was due to arrive at 1.45pm and depart at 6.15pm this evening. Right, since we do have a vehicle, and the train is going to be here for several hours, we can drive out to the National Road Transport Museum.
Just a few kilometres south of town, the museum opened in 1995 and is an extraordinary facility devoted to preserving and celebrating the nation’s unique road transport heritage. The EXPANSIVE complex has grown into one of the most impressive and comprehensive land transport museums in the southern hemisphere. From the Old Ghan Museum to the Kenworth Dealers’ Hall of Fame, and many other themed collections on-site, it was impressive. As we were making our way out of the Kenworth shed, Bernie’s phone rang to say the truck was ready to be collected. Would you believe it was just as we walked past a board explaining diesel particulate filters in the trucking industry!!! We said we were finishing up at the Transport Museum and would be there soon.
The museum features a Wall of Fame, sponsored by Shell Rimula, that features people who have been recognized for their contribution to the transport industry. There were hundreds of pictures of people inducted into the Wall of Fame, together with their stories, but we couldn’t find anything that explained the criteria for nomination/selection. I mentioned this on the way out and the staff member on the desk agreed that an explanation of the criteria, as an addition to the index folder of inductees, would be a great idea and thanked me for suggesting it.
We drove the Suzuki back into town, via the BP Servo, where Bernie put $20.00 worth of fuel in it. Back at the Isuzu dealership we paid the $$ necessary for the work done today to (hopefully) keep us on the road without any more glitches. Let’s just say that getting the truck checked out did not cost as much as a new camera lens. I guess when you go on an epic road trip there is the amount that you think it will cost and then you need to add a contingency budget?? I think we’ve blown our contingency budget out of the water in our first two weeks!
Off to the Alice Springs Railway Station to see The Ghan. Wow, it was A LOT of train. We wandered onto the platform and it stretched as far as we could see in both directions. We walked along the platform a bit, wondering if we could walk to the engine(s) at the front of the train. However, it looked like there were vehicles servicing the business end of the train, so we decided it was probably off-limits. It was certainly somewhere beyond the end of the platform anyway. Still we have a photo of the carriage that was sitting adjacent to the statue of an Afghan cameleer (sculpted in 1980 by Gabriel Sterk) on the platform. And that might be as close as we ever get to The Ghan?
After our trainspotting, we visited Woolies again for a few more supplies to take with us and some lamb forequarter chops to go on the BBQ tonight. We then visited our second servo for the afternoon, pulling into the Ampol Servo, so that Bernie could put Amplify Diesel in the truck. The price of diesel has dropped two cents a litre since we arrived on Friday so we can afford to treat the truck to some of the good stuff, ha, ha.
And back to the cabin for our last night in Alice Springs before continuing north tomorrow.
Steps: 12,780 (7.74kms)
