Ti Tree to Tennant Creek ...

About 20km North of Ti Tree was a pleasant rest area.  

There were two memorials.  One commemorated the 1860 discovery of the centre of Australia by explorer John McDouall Stuart.  The other plaque recognised Ian Dahlenburg, who founded Ti Tree Grape Farm in 1975.

I was interested in the information board, which gave detailed information on how mulga trees channeled water to their roots.

From the memorials, we headed another 90km to Barrow Creek Telegraph Station.  It was a great building and I took lots of photos.

It was another 90km from Barrow Creek to the Devil's Marbles Hotel.  

Somewhere between the two, we saw smoke from quite a long way off before coming to the stretch of road where the fire was active.

There had been police cars travelling in the opposite direction but nobody flagged us down.

 

We had great hamburgers for lunch in the beer garden, while admiring a big mulberry tree!

As we were leaving, Nick chatted to the local fire person whose job is to monitor fires in the region. He doesn't have any fire-fighting staff but landholders assist when necessary. 

Visiting the Devil's Marbles / Karlu Karlu was the day's highlight.  Bandit was allowed on leash in the carpark, so we took turns to walk around theGorgeous!

Tennant Creek was another hour up the road and we booked to stay two nights.

I was reading the biography of John Flynn (founder of the Royal Flying Doctor Service) before we leaving home.  We'd seen where he was born in Victoria, so viewed his grave when in Alice Springs.

A granite monolith from the Devils Marbles was placed over the grave in 1953. For over twenty years the traditional owners of the Devil's Marbles, the Warumungu and Kaytej people, fought for the stone's return. Eventually the problem was solved when the Arrernte people, acknowledging Flynn's contribution to life in the outback, agreed to replace the original stone with a similar stone from a local Caterpillar dreaming site. 

The whitish boulder in the collage is the one returned from Flynn's grave in 1999.  The distance between the sites is about 420km - so a long haul in 1953 and 1999.