• Left Tennant Creek

• The Three Ways Roadhouse

• Elliott

• Camped overnight at Daly Waters Hi-Way Inn & Caravan Park
  
   

After leaving the Tennant Creek Caravan Park, we headed north up the Stuart Highway. We passed the junction of the Barkly and Stuart highways and the Three Ways service station and continued on along the very straight stretch of brilliant highway. The scenery changed very slowly.

As we had a limited amount of time, we didn't stop at the spots on the tourist map that showed the local "points of interest". The small towns such as Elliott and Dunmarra were noted as we drove through.

We picked the Daly Waters Hi-Way Inn & Caravan Park to stay at overnight because the next logical stop, Mataranka, was another 170km further on. It was already around mid afternoon so we decided to stop and set up camp.
It turned out to be a really pleasant spot and had no problem allowing dogs.
It had just been taken over by a family from New Zealand and they were in the process of repairing and updating the amenities.

Being from New Zealand, Ray and Coral had a great chat with the owners.

Even though the drive along the highway was basically very boring, I found the plant life very interesting. It was hard to see how anything could survive in such a harsh environment but remembered it was Winter, the time of year when the area had little if any rain.
In past Summers, I had seen on weather maps, many tropical depressions or cyclones cross the area and dump huge quantities of rain, so I assumed what plant life did survive, was adapted to the extreme conditions of heat, humidity, wet and dry.

Driving at the speed you need to travel to cover the great distances, the scenery begins to look the same, just a blur of low trees, bushes and grasslands on ridges and in shallow valleys. Other areas have a very similar look to the landscape of Mars.

When you stop and take a closer look, you see what is a beautiful landscape in it's own way. Because of the habit of burning off after the "wet", a lot of the area is black and bare with reddish rocks. Dotted here and there though is new life forcing it's way upwards, producing green areas blending with the reds, browns, oranges and black.

Below are just a few pictures of the plant life. If I had have had more more time and a macro lens, I would have captured a lot more of the variety of plant life.

Click on the pictures for larger versions

Typical scenery. This was to be replicated many times for many kilometres

By this time we had been driving for around 3 hours since leaving Tennant Creek

(I contacted the Northern Territory Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment to identify this plant and was told it is a form of Acacia)

(I contacted the Northern Territory Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment to identify this plant and was told it is a form of Grevillea)