Arrival in Alice Springs
We are on a two hour flight from Adelaide to Alice Springs. We are being served light refreshments, which on this plane means a choice between a cookie and a cake (extremely small muffin would be a more accurate description). The cookie has been encased in an impenetrable celophane wrapper and the cake is within a small paper casing. In order to encourage us to recycle our now shredded sheet of celophane and our empty but sugary paper pastry case, they are not simply collected by the cabin staff and placed into a single recepticle. Instead every passenger on the plane is given a large paper recycling bag in which to place our one very small piece of rubbish, thereby ensuring that what gets recycled is 10 times more than it needs to be, due to the size of the recycling bag.
Good thinking there Bruce! England needs you! Had you ever considered a career in Health and Safety?
Alice Springs, we have arrived. It's hot. I mean it's seriously hot. Standing in a queue at the Gates of Hell is not going to feel this hot. In fact hell probably feels air-conditioned by comparison. Effin' 'ot with knobs on nearly covers it, but very unusually, apparently, it is also humid, which compounds the effect of the heat. Why does anyone live here? What made the first settler stay? Why didn't he just say, 'it's a bit hotter than I'm really comfortable with; perhaps I won't stay here. I'll find somewhere cooler'.
There can be only one answer......one day a congenital idiot named Todd set out with his wife and family from the warm and breezy southern coast to explore the interior of this amazing country. After days riding horses through miles and miles of flat featurelss dusty red wasteland, he found it was getting hotter, but Todd thought that this was just an unseasonal warm spell that would soon pass, so on they went. He justified this misguided decision in two ways. First, following a heavy tropical thunderstorm, he thought to himself, everything's fine out here; it rains, it's quite warm, the sun shines a lot, this is good. Secondly, the landscape was getting really interesting. Along with the endless red dust, there were now lots and lots of red rocks and even some trees. Eventually as it got hotter and hotter, the horses keeled over and died from exhaustion. Now without transport, the family was stuck. But whilst he may not have been the sharpest tool in the box, Todd was quite a resourceful fellow. He'd soon dug himself a dunny, built a makeshift shelter for his family from the abundant collection of large rocks that littered every square inch of ground and they all tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They survived by eating their horses, which within minutes of dying had turned into Biltong in the searing heat and just when this food supply was beginning to run out and our intrepid travellers thought this was the end, Todd discovered the well that eventually gave this place its name. He rushed home to his wife.....'I've found a well, I've found water, we're saved......I have named the well after you, my love....I have named it Alice's Water Hole.'. Alice, who was a little more atuned to people's sensitivities, than her husband, suggested the name Alice's Spring, which is more or less where we are today.
You still have to ask yourself why they bothered staying. There is no reason for this place to be here. It is hot, dusty, full of flies and generally unpleasant. But Todd did stay and so everything is named after him - including the Todd River and the town's main shopping centre Todd Mall, which has nothing to commend it other than the fact that every shop sells fly nets. Are they ever necessary!!
We have both bought nets to wear over our hats to keep the flies off. The flies don't bite. They just like flying into your face. After you've smacked your own nose for the fifth time, you buy a net. We might look ridiculous, but the alternative is to have ghastly little insects flying up your nose.
Alice was right about the name, though. Soon an increasing number of people came out attracted by the picturesque name and before long the whole area was full of disappointed very hot people drinking from Alice's Spring. For something to do, they started cattle ranching then mining then tourism.
Our home for the next two days is the Chiffley Alice Springs Resort Hotel and we have come down to earth with a bump! KI's Southern Ocean Lodge is at one the luxury scale. This is perilously close to the other end; oops! To be fair we would have considered it adequate if we hadn't just stayed where we did. Coming from KI we're verging on seriously depressed.
At least we can catch up on our laundry here. It won't be too bad!
And that's Alice Springs. It's the sort of place you go to in order to leave. We are here so that we can leave - first on an exploration of the bush and after that we'll leave for Uluru, Ayers Rock.
Good thinking there Bruce! England needs you! Had you ever considered a career in Health and Safety?
Alice Springs, we have arrived. It's hot. I mean it's seriously hot. Standing in a queue at the Gates of Hell is not going to feel this hot. In fact hell probably feels air-conditioned by comparison. Effin' 'ot with knobs on nearly covers it, but very unusually, apparently, it is also humid, which compounds the effect of the heat. Why does anyone live here? What made the first settler stay? Why didn't he just say, 'it's a bit hotter than I'm really comfortable with; perhaps I won't stay here. I'll find somewhere cooler'.
There can be only one answer......one day a congenital idiot named Todd set out with his wife and family from the warm and breezy southern coast to explore the interior of this amazing country. After days riding horses through miles and miles of flat featurelss dusty red wasteland, he found it was getting hotter, but Todd thought that this was just an unseasonal warm spell that would soon pass, so on they went. He justified this misguided decision in two ways. First, following a heavy tropical thunderstorm, he thought to himself, everything's fine out here; it rains, it's quite warm, the sun shines a lot, this is good. Secondly, the landscape was getting really interesting. Along with the endless red dust, there were now lots and lots of red rocks and even some trees. Eventually as it got hotter and hotter, the horses keeled over and died from exhaustion. Now without transport, the family was stuck. But whilst he may not have been the sharpest tool in the box, Todd was quite a resourceful fellow. He'd soon dug himself a dunny, built a makeshift shelter for his family from the abundant collection of large rocks that littered every square inch of ground and they all tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible. They survived by eating their horses, which within minutes of dying had turned into Biltong in the searing heat and just when this food supply was beginning to run out and our intrepid travellers thought this was the end, Todd discovered the well that eventually gave this place its name. He rushed home to his wife.....'I've found a well, I've found water, we're saved......I have named the well after you, my love....I have named it Alice's Water Hole.'. Alice, who was a little more atuned to people's sensitivities, than her husband, suggested the name Alice's Spring, which is more or less where we are today.
You still have to ask yourself why they bothered staying. There is no reason for this place to be here. It is hot, dusty, full of flies and generally unpleasant. But Todd did stay and so everything is named after him - including the Todd River and the town's main shopping centre Todd Mall, which has nothing to commend it other than the fact that every shop sells fly nets. Are they ever necessary!!
We have both bought nets to wear over our hats to keep the flies off. The flies don't bite. They just like flying into your face. After you've smacked your own nose for the fifth time, you buy a net. We might look ridiculous, but the alternative is to have ghastly little insects flying up your nose.
Alice was right about the name, though. Soon an increasing number of people came out attracted by the picturesque name and before long the whole area was full of disappointed very hot people drinking from Alice's Spring. For something to do, they started cattle ranching then mining then tourism.
Our home for the next two days is the Chiffley Alice Springs Resort Hotel and we have come down to earth with a bump! KI's Southern Ocean Lodge is at one the luxury scale. This is perilously close to the other end; oops! To be fair we would have considered it adequate if we hadn't just stayed where we did. Coming from KI we're verging on seriously depressed.
At least we can catch up on our laundry here. It won't be too bad!
And that's Alice Springs. It's the sort of place you go to in order to leave. We are here so that we can leave - first on an exploration of the bush and after that we'll leave for Uluru, Ayers Rock.
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