Alice Springs

This day was focused in and around the town of Alice Springs. In the morning, we drove out of town a short distance to the MacDonnell Ranges, two roughly parallel ranges of low mountains running east/west across Central Australia.

At our first stop, we visited Simpson's Gap. The riverbed here is mostly dry sand and small gravel, so we were amused to see the "No Swimming" signs.

There is actually water running here, but it is generally sub-surface except during occasional rainstorms.

This area is also known for a very small species of wallaby that lives among the rocks, but none showed themselves to us today.

The next stop was the Standley Chasm, a narrow passage with steep cliffs on either side that is quite famous. The Chasm is on native tribal land, so access is limited.

We returned to Alice Springs where we had time on our own to get lunch. Saturdays here are days for people in the outlying areas to come to town and stock up. We visited the downtown supermarket and were amazed at the crowds. People and their shopping carts were lined up halfway across the store, waiting to check out.

The crowd in the downtown mall was an interesting mixture of aboriginal and European ethnic groups. We were going to buy a bottle of wine in the liquor store, but we were not allowed in. Alcohol is tightly controlled here, and one must show one of a very select list of IDs. We didn't have our passports with us.

However, one can go to the pub across the street and buy a beer to drink there, because it isn't likely that you'll re-sell it to someone else who isn't of age. So to the pub we went.

After lunch, Mary and some others returned to the hotel. The rest of us were dropped off at the Royal Flying Doctor Service -- Alice Springs Tourist Facility. It's a long name for a museum devoted to the organization that provides healthcare and emergency air ambulance services to the isolated communities of the Outback.

The museum was quite well done, with a lot of interactive displays, virtual reality, and holographic films. The story of the Service combines airplanes and shortwave radios, so it was a good experience for me, and just as well that Mary skipped it.

In the evening, we left town once again to go out into the country for an Australian bar-b-que, sunset, and star-gazing. It turned out not to be a bar-b-que at all, but just food cooked in a kitchen indoors. We didn't actually see the sunset, and it was too cloudy to see much but a couple very bright stars.

The host was a rather corny old guy who billed himself as a singer-songwriter. He played the guitar and got us to sing Waltzing Matilda with him. His speech was a long, repetitious, stream of consciousness.