Today (or should I say yesterday?) has been – in a word – long. In two words? Very long. As Simon mentioned, it’s nearly 700km between Katherine and Tennant Creek, which means it’s long enough to have to stop and recharge not once, but twice. That’s on top of the early start, which saw us leave Katherine just over an hour before the more conventional cars in the Challenge.

…one of the benefits of driving an electric car – this sight at Larrimah (180km south of Katherine) didn’t bother us a bit!

First stop of the day was at Daly Springs, at 10am. We parked the truck in the shade, set up the generator and plugged everything in before heading into the roadhouse to tuck into some well-deserved bacon and eggs. It’s about a third of the way into the trip, 270km out of Katherine (and if you’re ever out here, may I recommend the NT Barra Burger at the Hi-Way Inn on the Stuart Highway – yum!).

Then, after recharging the Roadster (and ourselves), we headed off to Renner Springs, which was one of my favourite stops on the trip up to Darwin a week ago. This was more than 200km (and four hours) from Daly Waters, and meant firing up the generator again, tucking into some more roadhouse food and chatting to the locals.

Quite predictably, everybody we pass is still very interested in the Roadster, and it’s lead to a few interesting conversations. Many people are intrigued and curious about what we’re doing – and I have to mention the gentleman who stopped his grader for lunch in Daly Waters. He looked at the Roadster and asked me if that was the car he’d “seen in the papers”. When I confirmed that it was, he then told me all about it, and the challenge, and asked how we were going on our way to Adelaide. (I didn’t catch his name, but he was travelling with Chloe, who you can see to the right there – one of several very cute puppies we encountered today. Hi, if you’re reading this!).

Once the Roadster was charged up again (about two hours, this time), we set off for Tennant Creek as quickly as our little legs could carry us – it was starting to get dark in the desert! While that made the scenery pretty darn spectacular, night driving really wasn’t something we wanted to do too much of. Fortunately, we got to our hotel before more than a handful of stars had lit up the sky, and have spent the last few hours plotting and re-plotting stops for tomorrow’s trip to Alice Springs, as well as – you guessed it – recharging the Roadster.

Jessica Citizen