Up the Stuart Highway

There is not much to see heading up the Stuart Highway, so Aidan and Cody used the time to practice some 4 and 8 strand plaits that Jaime had taught them – they plan to plait themselves a dog leash for the pup they want to buy when we get home.

Cody practising the 8 strand plait he had just learnt

Back into the Northern Territory!

We once again crossed over into Northern Territory and from then we had our eyes peeled as we heard that the 2011 World Solar Challenge cars were headed our way down the Stuart Highway. We were lucky enough to see the 3 leading cars before we had to turn off to head towards Uluru. In first were the Japs, whose support cars were very excited and friendly as they drove past. They were followed by the Dutch, who we got a great laugh out of as we found the UHF channel they were communicating on and we eves dropped on their conversations – not being able to understand a word except that they would throw in a couple of English words - “road train”, “Roger” and “over”. In third was the US and apparently one of the Aussie cars was in 4^th or 5^th, but we didn’t get to see them.

The Japanese Solar Car

The Dutch solar car

The American Solar car

We headed part way along the road to Uluru and found a roadside rest area to camp the night so we could head to the rock fresh the next morning.