(written by Dave)

We woke early, even though it was a rest day – you just get in a rhythm. Perhaps it was me fidgeting, in anticipation of our pancake breakfast as well. Yes, that’s right, we finally got to have pancakes today and they were great. We split a full batch between the two of us, completely smothered them in yoghurt – fantastic (to each his own perhaps).

Pancakes finally

From there we moved onto the usual division of chores – I cleaned the bikes and Nancy worked on laundry. We probably need to take another day off somewhere well before Darwin to do trip planning chores. It takes all day to sort out the basics and we really need to focus a bit on SE Asia if we are going to go there from Darwin. Today we looked a bit for a place to stay in Darwin for a week or so and did not have much luck – making the point for a little more planning more relevant.

To stay another day in Tennant Creek would be good for planning but it is not that nice of town. I know I mentioned the indigenous issues yesterday as I walked to the store and back again today they really just hang out there in front of you. All of the stores have bars. The coffee shop even had bars around the outside of their seating area. The liquor store is all bars and the “hardware and gas” store no longer sells gas (due to substance abuse). If you purchase liquor, you have to provide a drivers license – not for age verification but to prevent you from purchasing more your quota per day. A local car dealer is moving to Alice Springs due to vandalism. There are some good things, like the cultural/visitor centre and the centre for “elders and respected”. But there are just too many people of various states of inebriation sitting, standing and mumbling. It all adds up to a situation that is not working well for anyone. Again, I won’t pretend to have any good ideas but it seems like something different needs to be done…

Nice coffee shop - with safey bars

Tennant Creek local crossing the street

Elders and Respected centre

We eventually found our way back to the camp kitchen and had a big stir-fry for dinner. While there are lots of fast food joints in town, the grocery store had pretty good veggies as well. Not knowing when the next serving will come for us, we took full advantage. We also stocked up on food for the next week. We are looking at 650ks to Katherine with no big towns. There appears to be a roadhouse or caravan park every night however, showers and no bush camps. We have to backtrack to Three-Ways Roadhouse in the morning but that’s not all bad news as we noticed that they too have pancakes on their menu – We’ll make a second brekkie stop there to see how they taste, if they really do serve them. Check in tomorrow for a full report.