Three Nights in Alice

14/11/08

Fatigue is slowly beginning to catch up with us and the temperatures are just getting warmer and warmer, especially at night. So, with this in mind, we book into a cabin in Alice springs for three nights.
The air-con is off when we enter it and the walls are just blasting out heat so we switch the fans on to DEFCON 1 and sit around like rednecks in our undies until it cools down.

Today we're deciding to go to either the Alice Reptile Park or the Desert Park. One is small and nearby, one is large and slightly farther away. The decision is made for us when we enter the Reptile Park and they're doing a snake handling session in reception. Off to the Desert Park it is.
Initially this doesn't seem like a great idea either. The park is deathly quiet, it's quite large and it's the middle of the day in the middle of the warmest part of Australia. But what the heck, we arm ourselves with a couple of audio guides and head round.

This proves to be a very good idea.

Thorny Devil

The Desert Park is a seemless recreation of all the desert habitats, flora and fauna included. It gives a really good idea of how what we've been driving across for the past week isn't quite as empty as it seemed. With a little bit of knowledge the desert can come alive.
After a couple of hours of wandering round the park we pick up some supplies in Alice, take them back to camp and then cycle back in to town for a cool one.

Mandy suggests Bojangles for some local flavour. This is a place where locals used to bring in their pet goannas, crocs etc. and the floor was covered with monkey nuts. It's not quite so rough and ready anymore but it still retains a good down-to-earth feel, whilst being wholly comfortable with it's tourist appeal.
Then something strange happens. Something distantly familiar is going on here. And eventually we realise, you can smoke in pubs in the Northern Territory! Not that Mandy is fussed about this but I'm quite happy to have a piece of good old pre-social-engineering pubbery back.

With this familiar feeling instilled we remain for a few more and sample some croc rissoles, kangaroo fillets and emu sausage before cycling home.

15/11/08

Today is gonna be a quiet one. Not only is there a hangover to be considered, but there is the realisation that there's still 1500km to drive to Darwin, and it's also raining again! We make an effort to head out to the MacDonnell Ranges but the weather is against us, and the very real threat of flash floods is upon us.
So we have a slow easy day, cycle into town to take photos of Bojangles and head back to watch England vs New Zealand in the RLWC.

After about 7ish things start to get weird. The guy in the cabin next to us starts shouting, initially we think our tv is too loud because the walls are paper thin. Then he keeps coming out onto his porch and shouting abuse, at who we have no idea. I figure on leaving it until the footie finishes. But it just gets weirder.
Not only is there shouting with no reply, but there is a lot of banging and thumping going on, interspersed with forays out onto the porch to call whoever he hates a 'gutless c**t'.
It's hard to write how serious this is beginning to sound, I've had plenty of experience of wasted neighbours making a racket and usually they exhaust themselves and fall asleep, or you go round and tell them to can it. But there's something about this guy's voice that sounds more than that. I can't see the guy so I'm finding it hard to judge what to do. He sounds more than drunk, he sounds psychotic. The banging and crashing continues as does the psychotic accusations, and still no other voices.
I think about phoning the police but of course we have no reception, and anyway we reckon they'll just come round, tell him to shut up, and then go, leaving us with an even more pissed off psycho next to us. Not a scenario for a good night's sleep. Also the campsite reception is closed and there's no mention of any security number or such.

I'm thinking about driving to the police station in town, even though I've had a couple of beers, but this just doesn't seem like a good idea. So Mandy suggests getting in the camper and moving over to the other side of the park.
And in what will seem to anyone reading this like a completely ludicrous scenario, we sneak out of the cabin, into the van and move it to the other side of the park in-between other vans. I wouldn't say this produced a perfect night's sleep, but I can guarantee it was a lot better than listening out all night for the slightest creak of a door. The van at least was a bed which was capable of driving away from (or over) people.


16/11/08
In the morning things seem a bit more manageable, as everything usually does. So we head back to the cabin to get the rest of our stuff and checkout whilst informing the staff of their maniac guest.
I briefly think about confronting the nutter now that it's daylight, but, unfeasibly, he has already left.

Mandy informs reception about what happened and they express disbelief, until she mentions that it sounded like he was trashing the place. Making it a bit more personal for them.
Then we leave, quite gladly.

Whilst looking for the road up to Anzac Hill I take a wrong turning and we find ourselves stopped in front of a rare sight; the Todd river is in spate. The saying is that if you see water in the Todd river 3 times then you're a local, and it's obviously a rare thing as everyone is coming down for a gander.


And I guess I feel slightly privileged, but I still want to leave as quickly as possible.

The Todd River (including water)

Alice from Anzac Hill

Uluru to Alice Springs

After a couple of hours sleep I think about getting up and going down to Uluru for sunrise. But when I open the curtains I witness the strange site of bucketfuls of rain pouring down.

This not only makes the decision void but cools the air enough for me to doze another couple of hours.

When we finally fully awake the rain has stopped and there is a nice cool feel like the desert is breathing again. We head down to Uluru for a closer look, but having had little sleep and with a decent drive ahead of us to Alice Springs, we opt not to walk around the rock. The option to walk up it is not available to us due to predicted high temperatures, but I'm fairly sure I wouldn't do it anyway. The real 'owners' of the place have stated many times that they would prefer people not to; not only is it a sacred site but the local aboriginals feel a very real and very deep responsibility for the rock and anyone who ventures upon it, and people being the idiots they are, it causes distress when something happens.



Everyone has their own view about this, but I'm quite happy to respect the people who've been here for thousands of years and besides, if you climb the rock all you get is a view of the surrounding desert, whereas if you stand at the bottom you get to see the rock, which is what we came to see.

Uluru and the Olgas

We awake not very early and the campsite is almost empty. Sensible people have gone down to walk round the Rock in sensible temperatures, but not us. We decide to drive out to the Olgas first and then watch the sunset over Ayer's Rock.

When we reach the first viewpoint for the Olga's the temperature is already notching 40 degrees so any question of walking any distance is immediately dismissed. But the Olga's are beautiful anyway. Some would say more so than Uluru itself.

The Olgas

The Rock from a distance

After taking a couple of snaps we head right down to the rocks and walk about half a mile into the canyon. This is more than enough in this temperature and we don't reckon there's much more to see from here. The other walk is closed due to the temperature, not that we would attempt it today anyway.

The Olgas up-close

We head back to the campground for a bite to eat and avoiding the afternoon sun, then we go and sit at the sunset viewing area.

In the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories rocks and boulders feature prominently, almost like fossilised deities and spirits. It's no surprise then that Uluru is so revered, in itself it is as stunning as you think, add to this the flatness of its surrounds and the realisation that it is just one large rock (3.6km long and 2km wide) gives it a very surreal feel.


There is a lot of cloud so we don't have perfect conditions for witnessing the rocks magical colour changes, but it's still quite beautiful anyway. And once the sun has set the red sand and the iron in the rock starts to give off a weird glow.


Like the Grand Canyon it's hard to take in a place that you've seen so many times in so many photos, and harder to realise that you're actually sitting in front of it.

Light Graffiti at Uluru

At night we head back to the bar and Mal is playing away again, with a slightly more appreciative audience. We're tired and dehydrated so we head back to the van.

This is possibly the most uncomfortable night's sleep I have ever had, I had expected the temperature in the desert to drop quite rapidly at night, but it doesn't and at Midnight it's still notching 30 degrees, all that iron sand and rock has been soaking up the brutal sun all day and is now giving off heat like crazy.

At about 3am it cools down enough for me to get to sleep.

Coober Pedy to Uluru

A long drive from Coober Pedy sees us arrive at Uluru campground just around sunset, so there's no point in going out to the rock tonight. Instead we jump on the bikes and try to find a cool beer and some food. Luckily enough the resort has an Outback Bar and BBQ.

As we chain up the bikes and walk up to the bar I hear the lilting country-jazz stylings of Chet Atkins in the air, which though it pleases me seems a bit odd in a tourist place. It turns out that the music is live and guitarist Mal Clarke is working his way through a repretoire of finger pickin classics, including Yankee Doodle Dixie, one of Chet's seminal lessons in fingerstyle guitar.

Whilst I am suitably impressed, the audience however are completely non-plussed and we both feel a bit sorry for the guy.

After a small break he fires into the Aussie classics in an attempt to get a bit of an atmosphere going. Even the bush reggae version of Waltzin' Matilda has little effect, and when he tries to get some audience participation going there's only me and Mandy and maybe 2 other people who give it a go. Mal's face gets grim. After calling everyone a 'bunch of drongos' he takes another break. Then he comes back with some dad-rock classics and finishes to my utter shock with a rendition of Joe Satriani's 'Surfing with the Alien'.
Nice work fella.

Despite Mandy's protestations I don't have the nouse to go and congratulate him on his work, so Mandy does it on my behalf and surprises the man by throwing in the names of Chet and Joe, so his night is slightly improved by this flattery. Much better coming from her than from me I reckon (?).

After a chicken tikka burger with an unfeasibly small piece of chicken in it, and a couple of cold ones we head back to the van.

Spaceport Coober Pedy to Uluru

We take an hour to zip round the remaining main sites of Coober Pedy before heading on a long day's drive to Uluru.

The Big Winch

Umona Miner

Spacehsip left when filming 'Pitch Black'

Coober Pedy is a fascinating place and the people are friendly but slightly evasive. Not that we've spoken to many people, but you get the feeling that people who come here are here for a reason other than mining. There's solitude and there's solitude after all. Still, I would recommend that anyone spend at least a day here and try to understand a compelling town sitting in one of the most inhospitable parts of the planet.

It's easy to see why they filmed Mad Max, Pitch Black and Red Planet here.

And I can thoroughly recommend sleeping underground, you'll have the best sleep of your life. But make sure you set your alarm clock as relying on the sun peeking through your curtains to wake you up is not advisable.

Fossicking Folly

Coober Pedy isn't just some weird hangout for troglodite hermits, it does have a reason for being here. That reason is opal, and about 70 percent of the world's production comes from here. So the combination of mining and the extreme temperatures have led to it's underground lifestyle.

These temperatures, the road conditions, the proliferation of small diameter but very deep holes, and the use of high explosives; leads us to believe that a guided tour of the area is the best option.

Radeka's tour is recommended to us by our hotel so we head there.

The tour guide Brian is a knowledgeable local and he takes us out first of all to the Underground Anglican Church.

Then we head up to the local cemetery to see the graves of some local legends.

Next stop is the full size, 18 hole Coober Pedy Golf Course. Here, you have to carry your own patch of grass around with you, and you rake the greens before you putt. Brian tells us that they're affiliated with St. Andrew's so I ask him if they've ever been over. He tells me that they went over to St. Andrew's a few years back and weren't allowed to play on anything but the poor man's course. I thought this seemed pretty low in itself, but then Brian tells me that St. Andrew's Golf Club actually own an opal mine here as well. So these guys risk their lives mining opal for you, travel 10,000 miles and you can't even give them a go on your golf course!

18th 'Green'

The First Fairway

But my prejudices about golf clubs are well documented, so let's not dwell on that.
Our next stop is the mines themselves and some hands on fossicking (or noodling). This is not quite as deviant as it sounds and involves raking around piles of rubble looking for discarded or unnoticed slivers of opal. Found nothing of course.

Good Sign

From our fossicking follies we move over to Crocodile Harry's house. Harry was a European baron who moved to Coober Pedy to mine opal and become something of a local legend and possible inspiration for Crocodile Dundee.

Harry's Front Door(s) may look familiar to fans of Mad Max

He was also obviously a bit of an art buff and his house has become a sculpture park/film set/museum of everything and everyone who passed through it.

Particularly impressive is the photo of him spearing a 7 metre crocodile, whose mouth he would quite easily have fit in.

Next stop after Crocodile Harry's are the Breakaway Ranges. I think the photos will suffice as a description. One French woman refuses to get out and take photos because she reckons it's artificial (huh?). Must be sunstroke.



We head down to the base of the breakaways and then visit the Dog Proof Fence. This is the longest man made structure on earth at around 5300km long. We're curious as to how you can build something so long without the dingoes just walking around the ends.

Either side of us stretches an area known as the Moon Plain on which there are no grasses, plants or anything but rocks for about 100 miles on either side.