Week 4: Alice Springs- Cairns

Well we got to Alice Springs after a long drive across the Australian desert- which was not just red earth as I had imagined, but had a lot of shrubbery and small trees. Still pretty scary though, if you were stuck out there! Alice Springs was a funny place.It's 1500kms from anywhere!  We had two days there, and as we were tired, we didn't venture out of town, but spent the time looking through the museums attractions that there was on offer.

We visited the old Telegraph Station (above), one of the major communication hubs of late 19th century Australia, and the site of the springs, from which Alice Springs gets its name -(Alice never actually got to see the place). Then to the School of the Air, where the children tune in to school lessons on their radio, as some live upto 1000 km from Alice Springs. Another establishment set up to combat the remoteness is the Flying Doctor Service, which has a good visitor centre in town. Our final port of call was the Reptile Centre, where we came face to face with an olive python, some thorny devils and bearded dragons , among others.

Then it was onto Cairns for Christmas. We realaxed for most of the time, having our obligatory day on the Great Barrier Reef. It was very impressive, although I must admit I found the snorkelling better in Hawaii later on. We both tried our hand at diving, and both failed- something wrong with our ears? Christmas Day was spent lounging by the pool until mid-afternoon, when we roused ourselves for lunch at a seafront restaurant- Sam had a seafood platter, I went for the traditional turkey dinner- she got the best one! There's not much to do in Cairns apart from the Reef, so next day we headed out to Kuranda via the SkyRail, a 7 km cable car , above the rainforest canopy- a specacular ride. Kuranda didn't enthrall us, so we soon caught the train back, an old historic line, built into the steep cliffs, in a project that cost many lives.

Alice Springs will stay in our memory more for the Aboriginal folk though. They were everywhere, but always in the shadows- almost as if they were existing in a parallel but invisible place. They shuffled about unoticed- raggy clothes, sober only till lunchtime, and progressively rawdier as the day went on. Very few were seen in the shops, and we saw none who worked in the banks/ police any official positions. It's a complex problem, and one that a couple of tourists like us will never understand, never mind solve, but we found it an uneasy place, and it left us sad.

to New Zealand

above: Christmas lunch right: Kuranda railway

Singapore-Melbourne                  Tasmania                     Sydney-Ayers Rock-Kings Canyon    (big cities and great coasts)     (devils, koalas and roos)       (operas, bridges and big rocks) Alice Springs-Cairns                 New Zealand North Island      NZ South Is. Kaikoura-Queenstown (reptiles and fishy stuff)           (big balls and gas masks)          (dolphins 'n' ice) Routeburn Track-Milford Sound         Honolulu-Hawaii Volcanoes NP      Maui-San Francisco (mountains, waterfalls and 4 wheels)  (Volcanoes and Active Lava Flow)   (beaches, bridges and prisons)