Day 67: Retyred, we drive to the Curtin Springs Homestead (07/08/12)

Bright and early, I raced off to Beaurepairs, the local Cooper Tyres dealer. There, a somewhat unhelpful bloke seemed to be unwilling to make a sale, he didn’t have my Coopers, but offered a more expensive set. I went around to Kmart and talked to a much more helpful chap there, who could fix me up with a pair of tyres that would go well with the Coopers on the back WITH a wheel alignment thrown in, altogether much cheaper than Beaurepairs. Irony was that he had to pick up the tyres from Beaurepairs!!

As he could fit me in at 10:30, I raced back to pick up Joke and we went off to the School of the Air again. This time school was in, and we walked in while the Transitions class (= Prep) was busy with a lesson. I lost contact with Joke for a while as she sat entranced listening to a lesson on symmetry. There were about 4 children in the class, each logged in to the school’s special interactive program via satellite connection.

The Transitions/Prep teacher reacting to an answer from one of the pupils. Two are shown on the monitor above. Note reflection of Joke watching spellbound.

School of 131 pupils. The furthest away lives about 1400 kms by road from the school

Wall in studio 2 which has been signed by all the famous people who have visited the School and talked to the children. Rolf Harris included.

Response to Joke's sign "Hi, from Tasmania"

The school serves an area of 1 million square kilometres (about 14 times the area of Tasmania, or 24 times the area of the Netherlands!!), and has an enrolment of about 130 pupils.

After the Transitions class there was a Year 8 maths class. At one stage the teacher had to out of the studio, so he turned the camera onto us visitors. Joke quickly held up a sheet of paper with “Hi from Tasmania” on it. Within a few seconds there were “hello’s” coming back through the speaker, and a comment in the chat box: “Wow, all the way from Tasmania!”

Next, the tyre change. This took until after 12 midday, but the result was well worth it. I did some shopping, marvelling again at how many Sri Lankans, Somalis and Sudanese – a lot of them refugees of one sort or another - were working in shops and businesses in Alice Springs, while working aboriginals were few and far between. It is extremely saddening to see that the welfare system has created an enormous group of helpless and dependent people who have little or no prospect of seeing themselves or their children ever rise above their desperate situation. I thought back to our conversation with Russell Guy, who blamed both the entrenched Canberra bureaucrats and the entrenched business and political interests in the Territory for the plight of the Territory Aboriginals.

Retyred, however, we had to get the caravan under tow, having received an extension from the caravan park. This we did at 1 pm, heading south for Uluru.

On the way we saw this mountain. It is Mount Conner rising 300 metres above the plain.

 That was 460 kms away, so we compromised and decided to go to a free camp at Curtin Springs Homestead, 100 kms short of Uluru. This would leave us enough time to enjoy another Territory sunset and the pleasures that a free camp have to offer. Once we were there we decided that we would spend a night at Uluru, and then spend another night at Curtin Springs on our way out. That way we could go and look at Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) at our leisure and still make some headway on our continuing journey.

We nestled among the trees at Curtin Springs Station

Mount Conner was still visible and was doing Uluru sunset imitations.

A flock of piyar-piyarpa fly around loudly discussing where to settle down for the night

Meanwhile kalaya walks around with his head down, wishing he could fly around with the other birds.

The piyar-piyarpa have found a good spot for the night and take in the last rays of the sun. What? You don't know what a piyar-piyarpa is? Well everybody knows it's a galah, you galah!

Rest and peace have come to Curtin Springs for the night.