This morning we made the short drive into Alice Springs and asked the ladies about the mouse plague down south. They were dismissive of it and said that there were more mice everywhere because of the extra grass growth – nothing to worry about. Bought Subway for lunch and walked around town. It looks like a nice place but not as big as I thought it would be. Had lunch at their mini Castle Hill. Another good city view.
We weren’t totally convinced so decided to do a trip out to the ‘Gaps” in the West McDonald Ranges
Driving on a bit further we reached the spot we had chosen for the night, Neil Hargrave Lookout (NT 48). Wow! What a beautiful spot. Amazing, superb views, up off the road and no one there – bliss. We chose our spot and waited for the sun set. A few other campers arrived and parked nearby but it didn’t bother us.
No reception for anything (the norm lately) so we decided to play Scrabble. Halfway through the game I heard little noises coming from the motor area so Jeff went to have a look under the bonnet. Mice were everywhere inside the motor area. As he stood there the mice were trying to climb up his legs and were climbing up the tyres to get in. He said there were thousands of them. This was not good! He came in and closed the vents so they couldn’t get into the cabin area and went back to our game. A few minutes later I looked around the see a mouse pop up on the dashboard – inside! Jeff made a grab for it and chased it down into the step well and kicked it out. As soon as he did that another one popped out of the same spot and then disappeared. This was more than not good – we now had mice inside.
A speedy decision was made to vacate this perfect spot and travel back to a caravan park at Alice Springs for the night – 107kms away. It was 9:15. Luckily we hadn’t unpacked much and were on the road in 5 minutes with the mice throwing themselves at Glen trying to get in as we left.
As we travelled we could see mice scurrying across the road. We counted 14 owls, a dingo and a herd of horses as we ambled back at about 70 k/p/h because of the dark. We arrived at the closest caravan park to find it shut and tightly bolted up with no one answering the bell. We went to another with the same result – it was 10:30 at night. What to do? We decided to go to the first free camp north (anywhere north). Arrived at the Tropic Of Capricorn Rest Area (NT 37) at 11 and climbed straight into bed exhausted (the beauty of a motorhome). Our resting place was about 10 metres from the highway but that didn’t matter until a B triple sped past doing about 130 and let go his horn as he passed. A fitting raspberry for the day we had had. We could hear little scratching noises all night.
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