After brekky it was time to explore 'The Alice'. We went to Woolworths first to stock up and then we had a good mooch around. We found Alice to be a lot more pleasant than we thought it would be. We had heard tales of 'The Alice' being dangerous but certainly in the day time it felt safe. It had a good vibe to it. I think it can become a little unsafe though after dark. They have very strict licensing laws in the Northern Territory. There is no drinking allowed in public and the bottle shops don't open until 2pm. Apparently they have a big problem with the Aboriginal people getting drunk and it is these drunk people that are likely to mug you after dark. All the camp sites in Alice have security gates which are locked after dark and fences with barbed wire on. It's a real shame that some of the Aboriginal peoples drink and cause trouble. The fault here though really lies with white men for taking their land and way of life and making them second class citizens in what is after all their own country. After Woollies we walked first of all to have a look at the Todd River. We walked right into the river and along the river bed. There wasn't a spot of water in it. It was completely bone dry and it didn't look like any water had flowed through town for quite some time. Apparently it only flows after very heavy rainfall and is dry 95% of the time. It's not very often you get to walk along a river bed. In one of the souvenir shops we saw some photos of when the Todd River was in flow and had burst it's banks. It was unbelievable to think that this was the same river that we saw today. From the river we walked up to the top of Anzac Hill which is a cute little hill on the edge of the town centre. From the top we got a great panoramic view of the town and the surrounding area. The sky and the cloud looked particularly amazing. The sky is big and the cloud formations out here in the outback are stunning. After this we had a mooch around some more shops and then left 'The Alice' for now to hit the highway heading south and down to Uluru (Ayers Rock) which is over 400 kilometres away. By Australian standards it is close to Alice! We'll be back in Alice in a few days. We drove about 80 kilometres out of Alice and stopped at the Stuarts Well Roadhouse to get a spot on their caravan park. We had heard that this roadhouse was famous for Dinky the singing Dingo and really wanted to see him. We arrived at the roadhouse two weeks late for Dinky. The nice lady at the roadhouse explained that Dinky was old and that he had retired to Alice Springs about two weeks ago! Dinky had been singing to tourists standing on an upright piano for 12 years. The caravan park here though was great and to slightly make up for the lack of Dinky there were a couple of emus roaming around at the back of the roadhouse. We chilled out for the rest of the day ahead of a long drive tomorrow to that big famous rock in the centre.