Traveling to Tennant Creek

I'm heading up to Tennant Creek to work for an Aboriginal health centre, through a government funded agency called the Remote Area Health Corps, who so far have been incredibly supportive. Ive been given education sessions from everything from Indigenous culture to the kinds of diseases i'm likely to be seeing in remote areas, and they have gone out of their way to make sure i feel supported every step of the way-which is SUCH a nice change from working in a suburban hospital. You really get the feeling your knowledge is appreciated and needed!
I was picked up early in the morning by the husband of the lovely RAHC coordinators husband in a big 4 wheel drive with the RAHC emblem on the side, which had ample room for all my bags and boxes. Mick, my alice springs mate, had loaded me with even more boxes of food, carefully zip locked bags of tea, sunscreen and a dubious tube of lye clear to combat the desert scourge of scabies.
And after picking up the all important large takeaway coffee, we headed up the stuart highway that runs up the centre of the country.
I was astonished to find us surrounded by scrub! Low growing trees, long grass and small bushes... not really desert at all! Most of it was black, with new green shoots emerging....seems there were heavy bushfires here around xmas.
As everywhere in australia, most of the fires it seems were lit by bored teenagers.
The space and the peace of the place slowly seep into my soul and I begin to relax a bit more...Getting out of Alice is such a relief....the tension and the underlying agro from black to white really scared me.
The landscape stretches endlessly... glowing ochre sand, brownish green and black scrub, and the ridiculously azure blue blue sky above..
broken by the occasional motel and caravan park. These all have their own whacky Ozzie touch, the weirdest by far being sited at at a place that has the honour of being the site of the most frequent UFO sitings in Australia!
The toilet is pretty horrid, not sure if that says anything about the quality of the alien fuel they also offer, or more about the hordes of teenagers visiting from Tamworth at the moment.
Back on the road we head up the highway again...hours of interesting conversations about kids and travels....one thing I have noticed is that the people who end up working in the outback tend to be travelers...people who have been all over the world and have led incredibly interesting lives...
What a wonderful change from the suburban hell I've been stuck in for the last few years!
Our last stop is at Karlu Karlu, the site of the Rainbow Serpents Eggs, interestingly named the "Devil's Marbles" by the early white people...
After Uluru, this must be one of the most awesome places i've been to here in Oz. It reminds me of the henges and standing stones around Avebury and Stonehenge in england. the Power of the stones is pretty amazing...and one grouping in particular called me deeply and gave me a similar feeling of warmth, strength and safety...with deep undercurrents of unknown magic....