ROSS RIVER

 
 
 
 

DAY 1:
On the way to Ross River we went via the Devil’s Marbles. We climbed up really high and Lauren was a bit scared! They are so huge and quite smooth. There are lots of them to see – a few hundred!

Our next stop was Ti Tree where we played in the park – it had a very high slide which was a bit scary, but we had a go anyway!

We finally made it to Ross River where we set up our caravan next to some of the other Pradopoint people and had a steak for dinner. We haven’t played with other children in three weeks – there are none to be seen in the caravan parks – only recycled teenagers, so we are looking forward to meeting other children soon!


DAY 2:
Today a lot of people arrived in the cars towing trailers. There is only one other caravan here. The rest of the people have camper trailers or just sleep in swags on the ground! Finally, some children to play with – about 30 all up. Some of the children we are playing with are named Brittany, Jessica, Samantha, Hannah and Hayley – definitely more girls than boys here. We help set up the red, white and blue decorations as we are helping the two American men celebrate the 4th July. They even had a hat cake and played the American Anthem. We had a Sausage sizzle and Hamburgers for dinner plus some fizzy which was donated by the sponsors of the event. Some of the people got some camp fires going – the biggest one had huge logs so they poured diesel over the logs to get it going!


DAY 3:
We set off early with a long day of 4wd ahead. As there are 30 Prado cars, we split into 3 groups to travel. We were in group C and our leader was Sean. We were the second car in line. We tuned our UHF radio to channel 18 and off we sent. Sean took us to some interesting sites – Artunga Historical Reserve which was Central Australia’s first town – it started from the gold rush. It has many old houses made of stone and two mines.

After a few tourist sites we started into Ruby Gap. It was pretty rough driving and no toilets to be seen (nothing like squatting in the dirt). The driving was great because we went over big rocks and through sand and dry river beds. There are 43 speed humps over the kilometres we travelled so we had to keep the speed down.

Once we got to Ruby Gap we started looking for ‘rubies’ which are really only garnets. Two fossickers came to Ruby Gap a long time ago and thought they had struck it rich. They travelled back to Alice Springs to show everyone their riches but were so disappointed that one of them even killed themselves!

We collected lots of garnets and then went for a walk though the gap. It was beautiful!

We returned home and had some toasted sandwiches for dinner and then sat around the fire until about 9:30. We toasted marshmallows and listened to stories that our new friends told. Mum says we can buy some biscuits and chocolate so we can make S’mores for the next campfire!