Crawling... along... and in... and on...

We're itchy. Scratching when there's nothing to scratch. Yet we scratch some more. Probably because of the army of ants that invaded us outside of Mataranka. They were everywhere.... in the bread, in the toilet rolls, in the beddings, in every cupboard and crawling along every wall and crevice in the caravan (and outside). Trouble was, they were tiny! Minute things that you actually had to squint to see, yet we could feel them crawling. It took 2 days to clean them out of the van completely, then we still saw some on the outside, trailing along the whole side of the van from top to bottom. Funny thing was that we laughed... we laughed at the lady in the next c/van beside us at Alice Springs... we laughed as we watched her go around her van with talcum powder and sprinkle it around each wheel.... talcum powder stops ants coming into your van... trouble was we thought it was an old wives tale and nothing that we really needed to concern ourselves with... I wonder if she'd been infested by ants or if she just heeded someone elses advise without question.... laughs on us now! Excuse me while I grab the talcum powder....

Some statistics that may be of interest:
1.959 the dearest price for Diesel
2 dingos in the wild we've seen
691 km of straight road before turning
10.6 km for the Base Walk at Uluru
9.5 hours the biggest days driving
130 km / hour speed limit in NT
10,200 kms we're travelled so far
1 snake we've spotted
32 degrees temperature of the thermal springs Mataranka
28,000 population of Alice Springs
35 degrees the hottest day