29th April: another leisurely start chatting with delightful fellow campers Matilda & Glyn, before we hit the dirt again, following the Mereenie Loop road heading for Hermannsburg for which we required a permit from reception at the campground costing $6.50. Getting a permit for Papunya was a lot more difficult so we didn’t pursue this further. The road was very corrugated and rocky, more so than anything we have travelled on so far, so we let down the tyres and drove slowly or rather Nic did, as it was challenging driving! When we arrived in Hermannsburg we discovered that the caravan outer door was in fact open despite it being locked, allowing a large incursion of dust! Nic attempted to make the door fit better and I embarked on the cleaning! It could have worse!

We set up camp as the only caravan in a locked area, the key obtainable at the supermarket opposite. Later another joined us.

We then strolled around Hermannsburg seeing the historic whitewashed buildings, now preserved. The sports oval was huge, Hermannsburg pottery was closed, the Lutheran church was quite big, a simple affair seating maybe 200 people, with hymns all in indigenous language in the hymn sheets. We walked around the cemetery with gravestones denoting deaths from late 19th century onwards, many of which were babies and children and women who died young.

Dinner was a stir fry of onions capsicum zucchini green beans mushrooms and corn held together with diced tomatoes and the last of the chilli jam, accompanied by basmati rice.

Despite being a dry community, we then found out that  Hermannsburg teenagers knew how to kick on, dancing to 70th music whilst our caravan rocked, until about 11pm.

The only other comment to make was about all the stray dogs around the community, most looking as though they had some dingo genes.

Tomorrow we head to Alice Springs to sort out some car/ caravan issues and stock up on some supplies!