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Spending time with Alice
Alice Springs, Australia |
Alice Springs, Australia
It’s been eight months since we travelled to Central Australia, but since I managed to update the two-year old trip to Europe, why not our wonderful holiday in the dead centre?
Good excuse to upload photos, anyway.
It was great to get away from a frigid Melbourne. We’d heard about the cold winter mornings in the Territory, and the tempreature wasn’t promising (around 17c with rain) but it was nice to be wearing a T-shirt again.
We took our 4WD and headed through Alice Springs. I was surprised at how small the town was. It’s similar to an Ararat or Shepparton in Victoria. Lots of aboriginals, lots of campervans and lots of policevans. It was cool to be somewhere we’d read about so much.
A huge centipede greeted us in our bathroom at the hotel. Nice welcome! Certainly woke us all up. We ambled around the town, went shopping for groceries for the two weeks and drove to the top of Anzac Hill for a spectacular sunset.
We also visited a couple of friends who now call Alice Springs home. Celia lives an almost nun-like existence on a spiritual retreat, working for the Anglicans and reading, praying and contemplating the spiritual life. She seemed most content and clearly loves the desert life.
Catherine is a school teacher who I hadn’t seen in twenty years. We experienced a downpour of biblical proportions as we drove out to see her and her family. She seemed to be looking forward to moving back to Melbourne – teaching obviously taxing on her.
The next day the Todd River was flowing! An unsual sight for locals, and if I remember rightly it signified good luck or an early summer or something similar.
We spent a good morning at the famous Desert Reptile Park. It felt a little sparse with a lot of walking between the exhibits, but the bird show was good and the snake exhibits reminded us not to run around the shrubs barefoot at night.
We took ownership of our campervan and drove out into the plains of the desert and the Todd River flowed by us out of town. We all really enjoyed our time in the town, even though the pool at the hotel was freezing and living in the one hotel room for a couple of nights pushed us a bit far. Good practice for the six person campervan!
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