Alice Springs

Driving from Ayers Rock to Alice Springs was such an experience!  We left Ayers Rock in the morning and spent most of the day driving.  I'm still amazed at the open, flat, dry (at times burnt) landscape with absolutely nothing for miles and miles.  How anyone can live like that baffles me.  The only thing we saw were dead kangaroos on the side of the road, one or two little villages (consisting of one or two houses) and the odd burnt out car.  In 100 km we only saw about 10 cars on the road.  Stuart Highway turned out to be a one lane (in each direction) road, pretty narrow at times with the edges crumbling.  Roads that we thought were at least paved turned out to be dirt roads... Our rental car without 4WD did good though and we arrived safely in Alice Springs in the afternoon after a few detours.

Alice Springs was so much more than we expected.  This tiny little place, literally in the middle of nowhere has a lot of charm.  We only had a day and a half but tried to do the most of it.  Alice Springs has a big indigenous population which you don't see in places like Sydney and Newcastle.  There are a lot of art galleries selling beautiful Aboriginal art, painted by talented local artists.  On the down side, the Aboriginal people in Alice Springs (and in a lot of other places in Australia) are to an extent marginalised and struggle to find a place in the community.  It's sad, but I guess not uncommon in a lot of colonised countries.

Thanks to the town being so small with most of the sights being within walking distance, we managed to see a lot including the Royal Flying Doctors, Anzac Hill lookout place and the Telegraph Station, the first white settlement in Alice Springs. 

Wyatt is now back in Newcastle working, and mum, dad and I are staying in Sydney until Friday and are slowly getting accustomed to being in a big city... 

 Mount Ebenezer, on the way to Alice Springs where we took a break. Nothing more than what you see in the picture!

 In the middle of nowhere

 Alice Springs Saloon

 Selling art in the background

 Sunday Market in Alice Springs

 The Royal Flying Doctors

 The main street in Alice Springs

A big lizard out at the Telegraph Station, we (read Wyatt) managed to get really close