We were back on the road (sharing with the road trains as seen here - that's ONE truck) with about 1500 km to drive to our drop off point in Darwin. First, off to Alice to stock up on supplies, we rose and made the boys get up too this time. We pulled into Alice just before noon and started with a visit to the camper rental shop. We had by this time accumulated quite a list of problems with the camper and we wanted to make sure they knew they were pre-existing. Two of the more concerning issues were the 'sticky' door lock and cracked windshield. While they waited for the windshield guy to come check it out, they gave us a loaner rental car to use. I went shopping for groceries with the boys,and Mike stayed back to deal with the camper. Turned out that they swapped vehicles for us, and we were back on the road by about 1:45 - so not much time lost even!
As expected, we filled up regularly with diesel. Not sure what the prices in Canada are at now, but here it is quite painful. We paid as much as $1.80 litre on this trip, with $1.40 being a bargain price in the bigger towns. Diesel is about the same price as regular petrol (or gas for the Canadians). Now that we are back in Mandurah, it's anywhere from about $1.25 to $1.39 a litre - the prices here bounce around just like back in Ontario! 
We had phoned ahead to see if we could get a powered site booked at Barrow Creek – but they indicated it was not really necessary to book. We made decent time and pulled into Barrow Creek around 5:00 pm. It was clear to see why pre-booking was not needed - even as roadhouses go, this was not a very luxurious spot to say the least. There was one power pole in the middle of a clearing. We were the only power site users when we arrived, although several more campers did pull in after us. The final sight was quite humorous, camper vans all huddled around the pole in an odd layout.
But fate was on our side is a weird way. As Mike filled the camper, what appeared to be smoke started coming out of the pump and our tank. Turned out the tank was empty (it was probably deisel fumes). They were out of fuel till the next morning. We were only charged $20 for the $25 which showed on the pump - and we were not charged for a campsite since they thought we were staying just for the fuel. Little did they realize we had tried to book a space, and would have stayed anyway!
The place was full of character however which made for lots of material for Mike's favourite pastime - he had fun perusing the grounds.
And as in many roadhouses, people for some strange reason like to leave things behind. The 'bar' (actually an extension on the cash register / grocery station) was full of memento's even in this remote station.
None of us slept overly well that night as there were noises all night of banging metal doors. It sounded like the wind, although there did not really seem to be much of one. Perhaps it was the locals up all night…at any rate it was disruptive to the sleep. And given the circumstances, none of us used the shower facilities either (see photo :-) Back on the road tomorrow to see the Devil's Marbles!
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