More Alice

Well, where should we start? Life has been very hectic over the last couple of weeks what with work and social activities.  The most exciting thing was that we had our first visitor….The lovely Christina flew up from Melbourne.  It was perfect timing as our neighbor had just got some work out bush and left us to use his panel van! That was pretty funny, us 3 girls squashed along the front seat, looking like proper locals.  

We headed out to the West MacDonnell Ranges to a place called Ormiston Gorge, where we did a walk, which was beautiful, even if we didn’t read the large CAUTION signs stating that the final part of the walk required a 1km swim to get back to the parking area.  Needless to say we weren’t prepared for that so had to backtrack for 2 hours!! 

We all ate and drank a lot (with Chris making fresh pasta in her tiny cabin and draping it over every available chair), visited local markets and laughed a lot!  It was very sad to see her go, everyone is super friendly here and we are having a ball, but its lovely to spend time with people that really know you.

Then came the Bang Tail muster parade, which has been going since 1959, which is a fun community parade.  

Bang tails are the hairy end of cattle tails which after muster were cut from each animal with a sharp knife and counted to tally up the total muster.  The early parades were named in the cattlemens’ honour and the name stuck. 

Then came the Ulysses bike clubs AGM, so the caravan park was filled with every type of bike/trike imaginable, along with trailers and numerous other fancy items.  It was so noisy!  They did a ride through Alice (all 1500 of them) on the final morning which was amazing.

As I mentioned last blog, we are both working girls now…..

So there has been a lot less time for fun activities over the last couple of weeks, although I did win free tickets to the AFL last Saturday.  Port Adelaide were playing the Melbourne Demons in Alice as part of Indigenous round.  Darwin has hosted the last 5 years, so it was great to see Alice get a turn.  Lyndi was working so I took Phil (one of our neighbours at the park) it was a great afternoon.

 

The Finke desert race is on over next weekend, it's an off road, multi-terrain two-day race for bikes, cars buggies and quads from Alice to the small Aputula (Finke) community.  It is one of the biggest sporting events here in the NT, and it has the reputation of being one of the most difficult offroad courses in one of the most remote places in the world!!

The temperature has dropped here this week, hitting 2 degrees overnight, but still getting to 20’s in the day, it’s a cold cycle to work in a morning.  Lyndi has even had to purchase some new cosy footwear for trips to the loo at night!!!

Lots of love to you all from us xx

Alice Springs

This is just a quickie to tell you all that we arrived into the Northern Territory and it proceeded to rain for the next 4-5 days, so much for going North to follow the weather!!  Thankfully we hadn’t ventured off the beaten track, we were instead in G’day mate Caravan Park 4 km out of the centre of Alice Springs.  So although it got pretty wet and muddy it didn’t impact on us too much.  As some of you will already know Alice Springs sits on the River Todd (which is usually dry) but with all the rain it actually flowed (for the first time in about 3 years I think) so we could hardly 

begrudge them it.  However it made our trip into town a little interesting as we tried to wade through the floodways, the trip was called short due to saturated shoes and clothes.

We spent the first few day consequently confined to the park and had lots of time to think about our next plans, everyone we spoke to said that there was so much to see and do in Alice, and how much of a fabulous place it was that we decided to put out some feelers in regards to work.  The busy season (tourist-wise) starts after Easter so we had a look what was about and were pretty excited when we found out that the Hilton were looking for cleaners or Room attendants as they are now apparently called!!. However I received my thanks but no thanks email the other day along with the one from Woolworths for service cashier assistant!!

Lyndi however has bagged herself a job at the caravan park we are staying in working at reception, with a little bit of cleaning at the weekends!! So she is super happy as that means she doesn’t have to cycle 4 kms into town every day!! I have a job in the Emergency Department here in Alice which starts on the 19^th May, so I have 2 weeks to cram some serious learning in about adult conditions, as it is a mixed ED!!!  I am really excited about the challenge, if not a little scared!!  So as it stands at the minute I am signed up for 6 months, so we will be here till the beginning of November.  So if any of you are interested Tiger airlines flies from Melbourne and does some good deals if booked early!!!! Not sure about Sydney & Brisbane, but would love to see anyone who fancies a trip away!!!!

Consequently we have an address, so if anyone wants to send us anything you will be able to.  Its  G’day Mate Tourist Park, PO Box 8421, Alice Springs, NT 0871.

We have had plenty of time to have a good look around town in the meantime wandering around some of the galleries and shops.  The 4 km into town is via some great cycle paths, the only down side is that there is a lot of broken glass about and I have had to fix one puncture for Lyndi already.  We went out to the Old Telegraph station and did a couple of walks and cycles out there.  It was one of 11 staffed repeater stations on the Overland Telegraph Line.  Which consisted of a single strand of iron wire on 36,000 timber poles, stretching 3000 kms across Australia from Adelaide to Port Darwin.  From here a submarine cable beneath the sea to Singapore connected Australia to the rest of the world.  News from Britain which prior to 1872 had taken 3 months to reach Australia by sea, now arrived within a few hours.  We saw this incredible centipede looking thing too!!

 

We went to the National Transport Museum (the main reason being was that it was free as part of heritage week!!)  There were lots of big trucks (road trains), but personally the most interesting part was the history and photos of the cameleers that came over from Afghanistan/Pakistan/India to help guide the explorers around the centre.  They also had an old carriage from “The Ghan” (the train that goes from Adelaide straight through the centre, up to Darwin) along with a heap of old posters.

Tjanpi (pronounced junpee) which means ‘grass’ and is an Indigenous social enterprise with over 400 artists from over 28 remote Aboriginal communities across WA, NT and SA making beautiful baskets, sculptures and jewellery from native desert grasses, seeds and feathers, raffia, string and wool.  They even won an art prize for their life size weaving of a Toyota!!!

We even made it into the local paper the The Centralian Advocate, when we were asked what we would be doing for Anzac Day!!!

We will leave it there for now or else I will get distracted and this post will take another week!!

Coober Pedy

This post is super late, but I had it all written with photos so thought I would just post it anyway!! We are in Alice Springs and in the next post will fill you all in on our latest change of plans!!!!

Well we made it to Coober Pedy “ The opal capital of the world” where 95% of the worlds’ supply of commercial opal comes from.  Most of the population lives underground in ‘dugouts’, which are thought to have been introduced by soldiers returning from the trenches of World War 1.  The miners quickly discovered the advantages of this when the temperature outside can be over 40C and inside is a comfortable 23-25C all year round!!  Its estimated that around 50% of the population live underground now, with most of the homes excavated into hillsides now rather than being dug from the mine shafts themselves.

 

I had been really excited about experiencing this whole staying underground business so we spent a couple of nights above ground in the caravan park whilst we had a 

look around town and then treated ourselves to 1 below ground.  

We visited ‘The old timers mine” which is a historic opal mine hand dug in 1916 where we conducted a self-guided tour which was so interesting….These are some of the interesting things we found out about opal!!! We are both a little concerned how interested we have become in all things stone and rock!!!

Opal itself is a solution of hydrated silica that has been concentrated by evaporation to forma gel which permeated through sandstone and deposited in cracks and cavities in the rock below.  Over 2 million to 70 million years since then, this gel has hardened under great pressure to form……OPAL.  The amazing colours produced come from very small spheres of silica, the way they are stacked causes them to act as a prism and as such, this ‘play of colour’ changes when you move the stone, so every opal is unlike any other opal!  The main factors that determine the value of an opal are its ‘brilliance’, the colours visible (predominant red colours are the most expensive then green and then blue), the pattern, the weight and to a lesser degree the shape.   

This is the oldest underground church in town.

We stayed at the ‘The lookout cave-underground motel’ timed to perfection for the 40C day by my personal meteorologist-Lyndi!!! It was so weird that outside was boiling and then by walking a metre or so into the hotel it was perfect, and all without air-conditioning.  The patterns on the walls are all made from the machinery that excavates the rooms and then they just apply a coat/lacquer to it, no need for wallpaper or paint!! Cheap and really interesting to look at!!

Water is super scarce around these parts, with town water coming from somewhere a long way away!! (I cannot remember where) and it is filtered about 3 different times but it tastes amazing!! The caravan parks themselves don’t even have water taps, you go to a water station in town which is just like a petrol bowser!! You put your 20 cents in and get about 30-40 litres, we didn’t even really need any, but just wanted to do it for novelty value!!

I will leave you with the hilarious warning signs that are everywhere around town!!!